AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took digs at Democrats and other Republicans on Tuesday during his annual “airing of grievances” on Festivus.
The made-up holiday, which involves an “airing of grievances,” was introduced in a 1997 episode of Seinfeld.
After posting on X that he had no grievances with President Donald Trump, Paul wrote, “…ok, do you think he stopped reading yet? Cause I do have one or two grievances, and I think we have to be fair and list them against both sides.”
Chief among them was the Department of Justice’s partial release of its files on Jeffrey Epstein. By law, the DOJ was supposed to release all files on Dec. 19, with only victims’ names redacted. However, the administration has so far released just some of the files and has redacted the names of people it has deemed “politically exposed individuals.”
The senator then joked that he asked the DOJ to look at his grievances, only to have them redacted.
“Shit. They blacked out every single word,” Paul wrote. “Why would they do that? Who are they protecting from my grievances??”
The senator then took the president to task for not attempting to bring charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci, who oversaw the country’s pandemic response. Later in the day, Paul took issue with Trump’s provocations against Venezuela. In recent months, Trump has bombed a slew of Venezuelan vessels in the Caribbean, killing dozens of people, who the president claims were “narcoterrorists.” Trump has said that the alleged drugs on board are “weapons of mass destruction.” The U.S. has also seized two Venezuelan oil tankers.
Paul called the administration’s saber-rattling “a bad remake of Iraq.”
“They even brought out the greatest hits, like seizing oil and ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” he continued.
“It’s just this simple – the president has no authority to do this,” he added. “If you want to play Battleship in the Caribbean or install Marco [Rubio] as dictator in Venezuela, you need to come to Congress first.”
“It’s not like they probably wouldn’t go along,” Paul said. “I mean, it’s CONGRESS, come on, they’ve done dumber stuff than this.”
The senator then took a swipe at Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was revealed to have written a lewd poem to a reporter with whom he had developed a nonphysical romantic relationship.
“Speaking of Bobby, I’m nominating him for poet laureate of the U.S. this year, and I don’t care if it’s only one poem,” Paul posted before adding, “Speaker of the House Johnson would do it if Trump told him to.”
