CLAY: Pleased to be joined now by Senator Rand Paul from the state of Kentucky. He is in Nashville at the airport that I’ll be flying out of here in a couple of days to head down to Florida celebrating — at least for now — the victory over masks that has been given to us by a brave and courageous Florida district court judge who applied the actual law. Senator Paul, what do you think of that opinion, and how pleased were you that it finally came out?

SEN. PAUL: It was a great day for travelers, a great day for Americans, and a great day for those of you who believe that your liberties come from your Creator and they can’t be taken away. A majority can’t take them away, unelected bureaucracies like the CDC can’t take ’em away, and so we’ve been fighting this. I’ve filed lawsuit in Kentucky about a month ago on this.

I fought this on the floor of the Senate. We finally had a victory on the floor of the Senate about a month ago. And finally — you’re right — a brave justice or judge down in Florida actually ruled that, guess what? Congress never gave the CDC the power to do this. In addition to whether they have legal authority, there’s no medical evidence that the mandates have reduced the incidence of disease.

BUCK: This is the quote: “This is a CDC issue. This should not have been a court issue.” That is what Fauci said just a few days ago.

SEN. PAUL: Let me reword it and speak so we can all understand: He’s saying he’s concerned that your constitutional liberty will be considered when he puts forward mandates or edicts that are based on his opinion. So, he doesn’t want the courts involved, but the courts adjudicate the Constitution and your liberty.

So, when he says he doesn’t want that, basically what he’s telling you is, that he wants it to be an authoritarian edict from an unelected person like him that is not reviewed or questioned by anybody in the public. Thinking about that statement, people should really give consideration to: Do we really want to empower people like Fauci to have so much control over our lives when they have such utter disdain for the constitutional liberty we should be able to enjoy?

CLAY: Senator Paul, you obviously are running for reelection in the state of Kentucky right now. There are a lot of battles that are gonna be taking place in both the House and the Senate, also a lot of governor’s races. What does it mean from your perspective…? I’ve asked you a couple of times, I think, but I believe it’s significant for you to tell our audience. A Republican Senate and a Republican House means what for Dr. Fauci come 2023?

SEN. PAUL: It means that I promise — and I absolutely will follow through on this promise — that I will subpoena every last record. He will have to appear before my committee under oath. We will bring in all of the people who discussed covering up the origins of the virus. We will look at all of the documents unredacted. We are going to get to the bottom of this mainly…

Not so much to attribute blame, although I think there’s significant blame to be had for Fauci and his cronies, but to make sure this doesn’t happen again. If this came from a lab, we should acknowledge it, and then we should look at this type of research. I will bring forward scientists who are not partisan, not politically motivated, and we will discuss gain-of-function research.

And we will ask the very important question: Should this type of research be done in the United States? Should it be done internationally? Should we have an international convention — such as the one we have on nuclear weapons and chemical weapons — to ban this type of research so we don’t have this happen again? So we’re gonna ask all of these questions, but number one on the list is: We’re gonna subpoena all the records and get to the bottom of this.

BUCK: Speaking to Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator, we also wanted to get your take on the situation as it pertains to the Biden administration right now and Hunter Biden. The laptop, the stories that are coming out make it seem increasingly clear that there was some access, influence, pay-to-play scheme going on in the past.

We know the media lied about the authenticity of the laptop. Some are calling for a special counsel. Do you agree with that, and do you think this is a headache that the Biden administration — and even the Democrat-aligned press — is gonna have a hard time ignoring for the rest of the year?

SEN. PAUL: You know, I fully expect there will be an indictment. I think Hunter Biden will be indicted, and I think that ultimately there are people in the Department of Justice who actually aren’t political partisans. Now, we’ve gotten a bad sort of flavor in our mouth about government entities such as the FBI, the Department of Justice with all the politicization and people using those agencies for their own purposes.

And I think the top of the DOJ is tainted with politicism with Merrick Garland. But I have to believe that there are at least some mid-level people looking at this investigation who will prosecute him the same way that they went all after Manafort for similar sort of things: Taxes and being a foreign agent, et cetera. I would think that without question there’s enough evidence that he did every bit of what Manafort did or more.

CLAY: Senator Paul, first of all, that would win me a steak bet with Buck and he’s already nervous about —

BUCK: Oh, man. I’m sweating now.

CLAY: — you now coming down on the side, ’cause I agree with you. I think there’s enough evidence out there that he is going to be indicted. But I want to circle back around to your press conference here at the Nashville airport today. How concerned are you about the appeal to the 11th Circuit that the Biden administration the Department of Justice has undertaken, and that while right now you can stand in an airport without wearing a mask — and basically all over the country you can fly without needing a mask on an airplane — that it might be reinstituted before all is said and done? What do you anticipate going forward?

SEN. PAUL: Yeah. This needs to go all the way to the Supreme Court, and we need a final ruling so they don’t do this to us again. Basically, the CDC has only power that Congress delegated to it. Congress never delegated a power to the CDC that said they could force everybody in the country to wear a mask when traveling. That power was never given to the CDC.

That type of law would not pass Congress. I can tell you, the Senate would not pass such a law. It would get almost no Republican support and not enough to get it out of the Senate. Same with the House. They might be able to pass with a simple majority, but it was never done. The CDC does not have this power. And there’s a parallel argument.

The eviction moratorium with where the CDC said you didn’t have to pay your rent, you didn’t have to pay your car, you didn’t have to pay your house mortgage. That was struck down by the court ’cause the court said, “We looked at the statute, and the statute doesn’t give you the power to do that.” So I think the same thing applies here.

But I think it needs to be fought all the way to the Supreme Court. And we need to make sure that this so-called power the CDC has is adjudicated and this is found to be something they do not possess that power. I am happy today and I’m seeing a lot of happy faces out there. When this was announced and United held up a sign at the end of a long flight the other night that the mask mandate had lifted? Spontaneous applause.

CLAY: Yeah.

SEN. PAUL: We do not like these mandates and they medically have not saved any lives. The masks are not effective, and so it’s not just a freedom argument. There’s also a medical argument to be made that the random used controlled studies — such as the one from Denmark, the DANMASK study — showed no correlation with health.

BUCK: Speaking to Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator, do you think that we’re gonna have more and more people from within the medical community who are willing to speak out on that issue? Because one of the great frustrations for some of us — and Clay and I are in this category — who have seen just the inconsistency, hypocrisy, and absurdity of a lot of these mandates from the beginning, is that a lot of people with MD in their title are too scared to speak out, unwilling to speak out.

Obviously you’ve been speaking out and you’re a medical doctor. Are you seeing a wave of others come along? Because it feels like, until people understand broadly that all of this was just harassment and failure and overreach, there’s always this possibility that it could come back.

SEN. PAUL: The problem with public health and with university doctors in general is that people gravitate into these fields who are people who have a propensity to authoritarianism, to left-wing politics. So, if you look at professors in general — like poli-sci professors or any kind of academic tradition — they’re like 75, 80% or more Democrat. The same would go for public health doctors and university medical doctors.

So there tends to be a tendency towards Democrats and liberal Democrats filling these positions. But there are some good doctors out there” Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford has been a very sane voice on this, Martin Kulldorff from Harvard, Scott Atlas who worked for Trump. There have been a lot of good voices on this, and they’ve actually started a new think tank at Hillsdale College, which I think’s going to be a great addition to scientific thought.

But the bigger, broader question here is, scientific inquiry and scientific truth comes about through disputation. You have to be able to argue your point. And if we better than certain types of speech or certain ideologies – like, if you think climate alarmism is an extreme point of view, then you want to question that, you’re now backhand from social media. So we have to have an open debate, and what I say is quit any forum that doesn’t allow for open debate. We should not participate in people who hate the First Amendment and who hate the concept of freedom of speech. We just shouldn’t use their forums.

CLAY: To make that be brought home to our audience, Senator Paul, you remember this. We had an interview with you that YouTube refused to post because they didn’t like some of the conversation in our discussion. And with that in mind, I’m curious what you think about the possibility of Elon Musk taking over Twitter. What could that mean? Are you optimistic about the changes that he could bring to bear there?

SEN. PAUL: I am worried about the psychiatric treatment that will be required for all the left-wing nuts that work at Twitter –

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. PAUL: because they’ve gone completely insane. I think they’re pulling their hair out. I think they’re very nervous at the concept of freedom of speech. And so we should be loud and clear that those who are for censorship are from the left. But, yeah, I quit YouTube. I don’t use YouTube anymore. I haven’t pushed a new video since I quit them.

I may have old stuff up there, but I have posted new videos. I post all mine on Rumble.com and I’m for any competitor to Big Tech. And my goal is really to leave some of the others. I may stick around on Twitter for a while and see if Elon Musk buys it and we get our freedom back there. But if not, eventually I’m gonna leave all of them.

BUCK: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator, always appreciate you hanging out with us on the show. Thanks so much.

SEN. PAUL: Thanks, guys.