NBC: "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Trip to Guatemala

Interview

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CHRIS JANSING:
In a makeshift operating room in remote Guatemala, a side of Senator Rand Paul most people have never seen. The eye surgeon, on a mission to help the blind and near-blind see in a country where more than half the population lives in poverty. He's one of 28 American volunteers organized by the Moran Eye Center in Utah.

RAND PAUL:
This is an amazing enterprise. We have a surgery center. We have a dental clinic and we have a place doing glasses.

CHRIS JANSING:
Scores of people line up every day for a week - hoping American doctors can give them their sight - and their lives back. A 79 year-old great-grandmother who hasn't been able to walk for nine years, then cataracts plunged her into darkness. A farmer just wants to see again so he can work in his field. A mission to restore sight, and hope, to the poorest of the poor.

And if it all plays well to American voters it could further Rand Paul's personal mission, too -- to position himself for a race for president.

RAND PAUL:
I've been doing, you know, this kinda stuff for 20 years and so--

CHRIS JANSING:
But not in a foreign country.

RAND PAUL:
Right. Well, I've been operating on kids from Guatemala for, you know, it-- I think the first kids I operated on were 1996. This isn't something new that we're doing.

RAND PAUL (NATURAL SOUND):
No but she doesn't really feel anything on this side of her face.

RAND PAUL:
A physician is who I am. And, you know, to represent who I am, that's who I am. I'm a physician.

CHRIS JANSING:
But you just won't always bring camera crews

RAND PAUL:
Well, you know, depicting who I am, I think, is an important part of-- presenting a face to the public.

CHRIS JANSING:
There is no doubt about the humanitarian aspect of this trip. Paul performed dozens of pro bono cataract surgeries over three days, in a region where there are only two eye surgeons for 800,000 people. Chronicling it all are Paul's advertising team.

RAND PAUL (IN VIDEO):
I'm Rand Paul and I approved this message.

CHRIS JANSING:
Whose TV commercials helped him with his upset win for Senate four years ago. Also along, a film crew from Conservative super PAC Citizens United, with equipment that included a drone for aerial shots, and its co-founder and President Dave Bossie.

CHRIS JANSING (TO DAVID BOSSIE):
Does having Citizens United, Dave Bossie, there make it look more political?

DAVID BOSSIE:
I think-- if-- having Citizens United documentary unit following him around, whether I was there or not, was going to do it. And so, you know, I went-- to oversee it. I went to experience and see exactly, for myself, what Rand Paul was about.

CHRIS JANSING:
Bossie did some charity work of his own, helping to install a water filtration system. But he spent many hours with Senator Paul and gave advice to the camera crew. For Paul, too, long hours in the O.R. were interspersed with interviews, multiple conversations with us over three days where nothing was off limits, including the death of Michael Brown and the unrest that followed..

RAND PAUL:
Let's say none of this has to do with race. It might not, but the belief-- if you're African American and you live in Ferguson, the belief is, you see people in prison and they're mostly black and brown, that somehow it is racial, even if the thoughts that were going on at that time had nothing to do with race.

So it's a very good chance that had this had nothing to do with race, but because of all of the arrest and the ra-- the way people were arrested, that everybody perceives it as, "My goodness, the police are out to get us," you know? And so that's why you have to change the whole war on drugs. It's not just this one instance.

And I don't know what happened during the shooting, so I'm not gonna make a judgment on the shooting. But I do know what's happening, as far as that you look at who's in our prisons

CHRIS JANSING:
It's vintage Rand Paul -- the sometimes controversial free market, small government, low taxes Libertarian with views that can also appeal to the Left, pushing for the de-militarization of police -- days before President Obama called for a review.

RAND PAUL:
Homeland Security gave $8 million to Fargo to fight terrorism in Fargo, North Dakota. And I say if the terrorists get to Fargo, we might as well give up. I say that as a joke, but, I mean, it's like, "What are we doing spending $8 million in Fargo? What are we doing sending a tank?" There's an armored personnel carrier in Keene, New Hampshire.

CHRIS JANSING:
And at a time when the U-S footprint in Iraq is expanding again, he's quick to provide a contrast to the Democratic presidential front-runner.

RAND PAUL:
I think the American public is coming more and more to where I am, and that those-- people, like Hillary Clinton, who, she fought her own war, Hillary's War, you know, people are gonna find that, and I think that's what scares the Democrats the most, is that in a general election, were I to run, there's gonna be a lot of independents and even some Democrats who say, "You know what, we are tired of war. We're worried that Hillary Clinton will get us involved in another Middle Eastern war, because she's so gung-ho."

If you wanna see a transformational election in our country, let the Democrats put forward a war hawk like Hillary Clinton, and you'll see a transformation like you've never seen.

CHRIS JANSING:
Back inside the hospital, less than 24 hours after surgery, bandages are removed and the reactions the are heart-warming, even tear inducing. Just a day before -- a farmer couldn't see through cataract clouded eyes, then the eye patches come off.

One of more than 200 success stories in a week -- lives transformed. For all the successes here, Rand Paul was effective but not emotional, something that worries even supporters who know winning primaries is often as much about kissing babies as making policy statements.

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