Paul: Attempts to Revive Full NSA Surveillance ‘Ridiculous,’ Programs Never Stopped

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

CARLSON: "Presidential candidate Rand Paul is a staunch critic of that program. He joins me live from our Washington bureau. Do you care to change your position now on the surveillance program?"

PAUL: "I think the interesting thing is that program is ongoing. We still are collecting all the phone records involved without a warrant in the United States. France has a similar program but probably our program on steroids and even with both of these programs going on they didn't stop the attacks in Paris. They didn't stop "Charlie Hebdo." They really haven't been working. There's really no example of them actually catching a terrorist or stopping its attack."

CARLSON: "Former CIA acting director said this about the comparison before and after with the NSA surveillance program. He said the Paris attacks have exposed how freely the Islamic state was able to operate in a environment in which intelligence gathering was shut down after Edward Snowden."

PAUL: "It's just not true."

CARLSON: "You don't think what he is saying is true?"

PAUL: “I’ll give you the facts. When we voted on NSA reform, we said the program could continue for six more months. As we speak the program is still continuing as it has been for decades with collecting all Americans phone records without a warrant. For them to argue that we need more now because of this take is ridiculous on the face of things because guess what, we're still collecting all these records and they didn't stop the attack. When people come to you and say give me your liberty, we'll make you secure that concerns me particularly when there's no evidence that any of the programs are working."