Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News on Saturday that mask mandates — ostensibly issued for public health purposes — “are all about submission,” offering his remarks in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, FL.
Partial transcript below:
MARLOW: You have a terrific speech … and you started with something that I wasn’t anticipating, but I absolutely loved, and that’s some actual science about the mask mandates. You broke it down in a very clear way. Talk to us about it.
PAUL: It’d be one thing if we were told you have to give up your liberty, you have to give up your freedom, we’re going to save your life. But what if you have to give up all your freedoms and they’re wrong on the science?
Every one of the mandates — and you look in country after country, state after state — you look at when the mask mandates went in — the incidents went up exponentially after the mandates. Restaurants, nobody can eat in a restaurant, there’s no science behind any of that.
Middle seat missing on the airplane, you really think you’re like 12 inches from the other guy instead of six inches, it really makes a difference? None of it really makes any sense, and there’s no epidemiological evidence. You know, it’s like, ‘Wash your hands, stand six feet apart.’
There’s no evidence that that slowed down the [spread]. … The trajectory of the virus hasn’t been altered at all by any of these things. I think the vaccine will, and this is why I really despise people like the CNN Doctor [Sanjay] Gupta, who I think is committing television malpractice by saying, ‘Oh, your mask is a much better thing than the vaccine.’ Well, no, it isn’t. The masks aren’t working at all. The thing’s going through the roof and people are dying. Why would you want to discourage someone from taking a vaccine and say, ‘Oh wear the mask.’?
And the masks are different, too. The N95 mask actually does work to a certain extent, if worn properly and used [with] sterile technique. In the hospital, our doctors — I have a brother and sister who are doctors, they wear the N95 mask, and it’s kept them from getting infected — but there’s no value to the cloth mask, at all.
It’s like wearing your underwear. You might as well cut your underwear up and wear your underwear as protection. It doesn’t work.
MARLOW: That’s why I call it a face diaper. So you’ve got a public who has accepted this, though, by and large, because we’ve been told by everyone we have to accept it. Have we lost track of the Constitution? Have we forgotten about the Constitution?
PAUL: Well, that’s why I like this youth group here. What are they asked to give up? They’re being asked to give up their graduation from high school, their graduation from college, their wedding, and if we’re not careful, it’s gonna be their five-year wedding anniversary or their ten-year anniversary. We’re still gonna be wearing masks.
