Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, the g. O. P. Changed the rules. Did the democrats lose a much bigger fight . Ill ask former senator Allen Simpson. And after reports that fox paid out at least 13 million to female employees accusing bill oreilly of harassment, advertisers are fleeing the show. Is this justice or censorship . First, the president is mostly receiving praise from both sides of the ail for the tomahawk missile strike on syria in response to Bashar Al Assads sarin gas attack on children. Im not against it. Its harder for me to say that im for it. How could you be against the idea of seeking retribution after seeing those horrific pictures of kids who were gassed to death . I just want to make sure that were really going after the evil doers this time, that we really have the goods, that it was Bashar Al Assad who initiated this, and that the base we hit was in fact the point of origin for the sarin gas. So far, that all seems to check out. With my cynicism about government at an alltime high just because im told the case, i dont necessarily buy into it. That blind faith ended with reports of iraqs weapons of mass destruction. And my second concern is that i hope this isnt the beginning of a larger scale commitment that culminates with american boots on the ground in yet another middle eastern country with no exit plan. President trump campaigned against such incursions and that pleased my next guest. Like his father, former congressman ron paul, senator rand paul has earned a reputation for noninterventionalist thought. During the campaign he was on the receiving end of then candidate trumps mocking salvos. Recently hes emerged as one of the president s newfound friends. Senator paul has returned to his roots and i caught up with him after the Senate Briefing on the retaliatory attack. I know there was a closed door meeting for members of the senate regarding the syrian situation. Is there any reason to believe that the russians may have played a role in that chemical attack that killed children . You know, i cant go into the details of anything from the intelligence briefing, but what i can say is that our government, our intelligence communities, our military is convinced that the Syrian Government was involved with the chemical attack. Are you convinced that the target that we struck indeed is where that attack originated . You know, i guess what ive been more concerned is not the military aspects of the mission or even whether or not it will have any significance. My concern has been mostly that this is an inappropriate way to begin a war, that the constitution says war begins with a vote in congress, and that even george bush who was often treated mercilessly by the media as being so far out there, he came to congress and asked to go to war against the taliban and those who attacked us on 9 11. He also did the same in iraq. And so i think this is a wrongheaded notion that we just skip the most important step and that is whether or not we should go to war. Do you think that President Trump was wrong to be emotionally swayed by the photographs of those dead kids . I think you would almost not be human to be emotionally swayed by it, but in an era of television, we see horrific images almost every day. We see the swollen distended babies who are swollen from malnutrition, from maybe their leaders stealing the food that comes in as aid and reselling it on the black market. We see people burned and beheaded throughout the world. So there are atrocities throughout the world. We just have to decide when we are going to intervene as a country, when were going to put our young men and women, put their lives on the line and we dont, frankly, do it for every atrocity in the world. It doesnt mean we dont have great sympathy but we have to debate when and where to go to war. Thats what our Founding Fathers asked us to do. In trying to determine whether its appropriate to be a strike, theres a historical parallel that occurs to me. Would senator rand paul have opposed the bombing of the tracks going into auschwitz . I havent contemplated going back to world war ii but i can tell you a more similar analogy would be Saddam Hussein gassed the kurds and we chose to intervene. We overthrew a dispit, but we wound up with something else, an emboldened and empowered iran. There can be an Endless Supply of enemies and you have to ask yourself who takes over next, are they better than the current occupant. Are the radical islamic rebels in syria better than assad . There are also 2 million christians in syria being protected by assad and they fear the islamic rebels taking over. So theres a complicated decisionmaking process as to who are the good guys in the war. If you talk about auschwitz, its pretty clear there was one bad guy and many innocent slaughtered, so i dont think that thats a necessarily correct analogy. But lets just pursue that one step further, right . If the argument is that it would be right to take out the tracks go into auschwitz because there was a greater good, we could avert catastrophe in terms of human loss the reason why its not a great analogy is because we were at war and absolutely you do all of that when youre at war. And we had made a decision to be at war so it wouldnt have been a big deal or a big decision. The actual more important historical question, if you want to talk about history, is why didnt we, why didnt we show more concern for those in these concentration camps because theres some historical evidence that we could have done much more. But i dont think thats really a question for me. Its a question historically for those who at the time didnt act and do more. Has the president himself reversed course because in august of 2013 he tweeted, the president , in this case referring to president obama, must get congressional approval before attacking syria. Big mistake if he does not. I cant answer for the president , and he hasnt asked me to be his spokesman yet. He hasnt even asked mow e to reveal his golf score. My hope is that this does not reflect hey profound change in his attitude towards foreign policy. He clearly ran on the iraq war was a mistake, regime change hasnt worked and involving ourselves in civil wars throughout the world is really not the job of americas foreign policy. Some will say maybe this is an exception to the rule, and i hope, frankly, that this is an exception, that he wont believe that we can actually solve the syrian war militarily. I hope he doesnt believe that we can get involved in yemens war frankly, but theres been some evidence that some both syria and yemen hes had more of a propensity to get involved than i would have hoped for. I completely understand that your position, senator rand pauls position, is that Congress Needs to be a part of this equation. What of the argument that says that the 2001 authorization gives him grounds to do that which he has done, the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force, those who aided terrorist attacks, those who harbored organizations, you know the language of the 2001 authorization. Is that enough for him . People who make that argument are not intellectually serious people. In fact, i think theyre dishonest people. That resolution specifically says september 11th. It was 9 11. It was the people who perpetrated, helped organized that. If someone is going to come on television or in any public forum and say assad had something to do with 9 11, theyre frankly just a dishonest person. No, we cannot let one generation bind another generation. We are now having a new generation of soldiers that might not even have been born or have been barely born at the time of 9 11. We have new legislature which turns over periodically and a Representative Democracy like we have, you should vote. I mean, the generation of 9 11 certainly shouldnt bind us to a forever war in the middle east. I think thats absurd, its wrongheaded and frankly intellectually dishonest. Was there a vital u. S. Interest at stake in our retaliation . You know that President Trump has said that the potential for the spread of chemical weapons was that vital u. S. Interest. Do you agree with the president . No. I think as horror itific as the attacks were and as heart rendering as the pictures were, i dont believe there was a National Interest of the united states. Thats why you have the debate. Too often everyone knows the buzz words, the catch words. It was in our vital interest. Well, thats the conclusion. So we get 100 senators together and we have a debate and 435 members of congress who have a debate. Everybodys going to assert from their position that it either does or does not have a Vital National security interest, but thats sort of like weighing the facts in a jury and you can come to different conclusions. I think its hard pressed to believe that im not saying its a good thing that syrians would have chemical weapons but its a hard press to believe that they have the ability to either launch them in any military way to attack us at home or bring them here somehow. Its not a good thing and i think its good for us as part of the civilized world to unite and say we shouldnt have these things. In some ways we should lead by example and it was always trudge troubling to me that we were the biggest stock pilar of nerve gas. Who were the people who thought it was a good idea for the u. S. To have the biggest stock pile of nerve gas. Fortunately we never used it, but you dont stock pile that stuff unless you have the intentions some day of using it. On friday nikki haley said this might be the beginning, there could be more action that we would take. How concerned is senator rand paul that the net of all this might be Ground Troops, american Ground Troops in syria. I asked nikki haley very clearly during her confirmation whether or not she would advocate for war not authorized by congress, and in her testimony to me she said she wouldnt and so i take her at her word. She may not quite be understanding 59 cruise missiles as war, but i certainly hope that she and others will understand that increasing and escalating Ground Troops in syria is obviously war. The great irony is, look, we just appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch because all the conservatives said hes an originalalist and hes going to obey the interpretation as the Founding Fathers believed it. Guess what, the Founding Fathers also believed you should declare a war. So couldnt we have a few republicans who are consistent enough to believe in the original interpretation with regard to war . Final question, are we being hypocritical insofar as we exact in the name of those dead children but still refused to take on additional syrian refugees, many of whom are kids . I think when you look at what creates mass migration, what creates refugees and what creates the death that has happened in syria, its war. People ask me that and they say, well, arent we going to help them. Well, if war created it, more war may well create more refugees and more death. I dont understand how more war is going to lead to less refugees. I do think though that there is an opening and one of the tragedies of all this russia craziness right now is it probably does prevent us from having any kind of meaningful dialogue because anybody who wants to talk to putin about a political settlement and helping assad go away, anybody who wants to talk about that, myself included, will be called by the mccains of this world a friend of vladimir putin. So as long as we have that kind of stupidity involved in the debate makes it very hard to get to what president obama said and many other thinking people said, that the answer in syria is ultimately a political solution. Senator rand paul, thank you so much. Thank you. I think he took a shot at senator mccain at the end of the interview. What are your thoughts. Tweet me or go to my Facebook Page and i will read responses throughout the course of the program. Heres something that just got put up on facebook, lets see. Wag the dog much . Jerome, im just saying im not buying into it only because the government is saying it to me. I did say on Sirius Xm Radio Program last week its times like these when the president s numbers are in a tail spin that some of them get trigger happy. Make up your own mind. Still to come, after it was revealed there have been millions of dollars paid in Sexual Harassment settlements for bill oreilly, advertisers are fleeing his fox news program, but is it an advertisers responsible to police the air waves, or should it be up to the viewing audience . And just before ordering the strike on syria, President Trump was meeting with chinas president xi. What message did he convey, meaning President Trump, regarding north korea . 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Shes also adjunct professor at new york university. Heres what occurs to me. Theyre having dover sole at maralago. Do you think that President Trump was intending to send a message to president xi at that moment about north korea . Absolutely. We know that trump ordered these attacks before his meeting with xi, and we know that these attacks take months of preparation to put together, so all intelligence all the legal arguments for this had already long been assembled and i think it was opportunistically timed to coincide with the xi meeting as a way to send a strong message to the chinese that the Trump Administration means business when it comes to the issues of north korea and the south china seas. I would say that he was very effective because all the comments coming out of the meeting was that the meetings were very frank and candid. These are statements by tillerson. And trump saying that were going to be cooperating means that he probably got assurance from xi jinping that the chinese will agree to demands by the u. S. Because its clear that the chinese do not want to engage in military confrontation and would seek a diplomatic solution to anything. Secretary tillerson said that we were prepared i think his word choice was, to chart our own course. Do you interpret that to mean that its an acknowledgment that president xi and the chinese are not about to reign in pea i dont think yang . According to Chinese Media they preannounced before this meeting with trump that if the u. S. Were to go ahead and perform a Surgical Strike against the north korean leader, china would not be in a position to stop it because the chinese would not know when the strike would occur and they wouldnt know how it would occur. They did say that if u. S. Troops were to cross the 38th parallel, then they would jump into action. And so, that is almost a tacit agreement to the u. S. Saying that you have our permission in some respects, if youre going to go forward with something similar to the syrian attack, but theyre going to say if you dare send troops over then thats really where we draw the line. So i think the u. S. Needs to think about is this something theyre willing to take on because north korea has striking capability against seoul and japan, seoul being very close to the border, and there have been estimates that