Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul dropped a shocking warning over the weekend following Donald Trump’s 34-count felony conviction during an interview with “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo, saying he had “bigger” concerns beyond the former president.
The charges revolved around a purported scheme to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The aim was to prevent her from revealing a purported 2006 affair with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump could now be sentenced to a maximum of 4 years in prison on each count, though he’s a first-time offender, and these were non-violent crimes. (see video below)
“A sad day in America,” Paul said of the verdict. “And what I worry about is something even bigger than Donald Trump. I worry about strife. I worry about war in the streets. I worry about 50% of the public believing that the court system will be used against them. Once upon a time, it was because of the color of your skin, now because of the shade of your ideology. I worry about that and I worry, when half the country thinks they won’t be treated fairly, what happens and how people react.”
Continuing, he said: “If you look at records violations and you look at Hillary Clinton, $8 million expense, and they slapped her on the wrist because she got an $8,000 fine. And that’s actually probably appropriate, some kind of fine for mislabeling things. But there’s a real question whether it is mislabeled. Was it a legal expense? Sounds like it was a legal expense. All nondisclosure agreements, I believe, are legal expenses. I’m guessing there are hundreds of them in New York City as we speak. And my guess is not one of them has ever been taken to court. I think Donald Trump is the only person ever prosecuted for this particular crime.”
WATCH:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) dropped some stunning revelations about Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy during a Fox News appearance on Friday, a day after a jury in Manhattan convicted the former president. Host Laura Ingraham led off the segment in getting Gingrich’s response to the verdict:
Well, Newt, I think the left doesn’t quite understand that it’s bitten off more than it can chew here. Because Trump campaigned from the very beginning as an outsider. And a lot of people said, well, you got into power. You’re part of the now elite GOP establishment of a sort. So you can’t really claim to be an outsider anymore. You already were on the inside. But he is the ultimate outsider now fighting against a corrupt establishment that will each subvert a justice system to cling to power. At the same time, Democrats say Trump will never leave office. If he is elected he is never going to leave office. What does it look like tonight, Newt, that Biden will never leave office.
“Every American has to remember a government big enough to take on a billionaire former president and frontrunner this year. A government that will take him on can destroy the rest of us,” Gingrich observed. “This really is a vote this fall between going back to the Constitution with Trump or the establishment of a dictatorship in which the people who are corrupt tell the rest of us to do what we want you to or else we will destroy you the way we destroyed Trump.
See also: GOP Senators Launch Bid To Punish Democrats After Trump Conviction
“I think, in that sense, this is an extraordinarily important moment depending on how the American people respond,” Gingrich continued. “Personally, I believe deeply in the American people. I do not believe the American people want government to control them. I don’t think the American people want Joe Biden to dominate them. And I don’t think they are dumb enough to believe that any of this is fair.
“So, I think the net advantage will be, over the next six weeks, an enormous increase in strength for Trump and a real problem for the left as it begins to realize that there may be nothing it can do to stop him from becoming president,” he predicted.
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.