The Rand-Trump alliance bursts into view
Enemies on the 2016 campaign trail, the Kentucky senator and the iconoclastic president have developed a quiet Washington friendship.
By ELIANA JOHNSON
08/08/2018
He infuriates West Wing aides who have had to scramble to win his support for key votes, but Rand Paul has the ear, and the affection, of the most important person in the White House: President Donald Trump.
Once bitter rivals on the Republican campaign trail, the Kentucky senator and the commander-in-chief have bonded over a shared delight in thumbing their noses at experts the president likes to deride as “foreign policy eggheads,” including those who work in his own administration.
When Trump dismissed national security adviser H.R. McMaster in March, replacing him with John Bolton, he told McMaster, “Look, he’s a hawk, you’re hawk, I can handle you guys,” according to a White House aide. While Trump tolerates his hawkish advisers, the aide added, he shares a real bond with Paul: “He actually at gut level has the same instincts as Rand Paul.”
Paul has quietly emerged as an influential sounding board and useful ally for the president, who frequently clashes with his top advisers on foreign policy. His relationship with Trump, developed via frequent cell phone calls and over rounds of golf at the president’s Virginia country club, became publicly apparent for the first time on Wednesday when the senator announced he had hand-delivered a letter to the Kremlin on Trump’s behalf.
Both Paul and Trump routinely rail against foreign entanglements, foreign wars, and foreign aid – positions characterized as isolationist by critics and as “America First” by the president and his supporters.
Even where they disagree, Paul has extracted small victories.
Trump has drawn praise from the right-wing establishment for hammering the mullahs in Tehran, junking the Iran nuclear deal and responding to the regime’s saber rattling with aggressive rhetoric of his own, warning Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on Twitter last month in all caps that future threats would be met with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”
But Trump has stopped short of calling for regime change even though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Bolton support it, aligning with Paul instead, according to a GOP foreign policy expert in frequent contact with the White House. “Rand Paul has persuaded the president that we are not for regime change in Iran,” this person said, because adopting that position would instigate another war in the Middle East.
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