Rand Paul: Donald Trump's lead boosted by a "billion dollars worth" of media
Presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky isn't blaming anyone for his slump in the polls, but he does think fellow contender and leader of the pack Donald Trump has been boosted by one source in particular.
"[H]e had a little bit of help. Y'all covered him with about a billion dollars worth of news media," Paul said Thursday on "CBS This Morning."
Since Trump entered the race, Paul's fundraising and poll numbers have suffered in the early-voting states. At the end of June, he was stuck at fifth in Iowa, sixth in New Hampshire and 10th in South Carolina, according to RealClearPolitics, which averages polls.
"I've really had a little trouble getting traction with getting the message out," Paul said. "You have to admit that there's been an extraordinary amount of attention paged to one person and I think anybody's numbers would rise with that amount of attention."
The latest CBS News poll put Trump at 24 percent, more than 10 points ahead of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who's in second place with 13 percent.
Paul attributed Trump's rise to a "temporary sort of loss of sanity," he said Thursday on CNN. And he's not the only candidate with strong words for the billionaire. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry called Trump a "cancer on conservatism," and in July on "CBS This Morning," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Trump should "stop being a jackass."
"I don't think we should just sort of succumb to, 'Oh you can say anything' and, you know, all of the sudden we're in sort of some sort of reality TV show. I think there needs to be a substantive debate," Paul said.
And a debate there will be. Ten Republican presidential candidates are making final preparations for Thursday night's debate in Cleveland.
Against the wishes of his campaign staff, according to Paul, the audience can expect him to "mix it up" and get "into it with the other candidates." Paul also criticized presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and President Obama's handling of the 2012 attack on the U.S compound in Benghazi, Libya.
"I think we really have to determine what are the best ways to counteract our foes around the world. Do we really need to be involved in every civil war, and has it made us more safe?" Paul said.
On foreign policy, Paul stands more at odds with his fellow GOP nominees, and favors a more limited authorization to put boots on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), although he is more of an interventionist than his father Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2012.
"I think there needs to be a voice of reason and there needs to be somebody promoting a rational foreign policy and I think sometimes both sides are a little bit over-crazed about intervention," Paul said.
Paul also addressed the recent indictment of his nephew in-law Jessie Benton, a key member of a super PAC supporting his campaign. Benton, along with two others, are accused of paying $70,000 to an Iowa state senator during the presidential bid of the Kentucky senator's father, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
"It's a little bit suspicious to me though that it just happens to take four years and then they decide to do something, that President Obama's administration decides to do something on the eve of the debate," Paul said.