Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) rolled his eyes on Thursday when former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie invoked the broken families he interacted with in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Christie and Paul sparred over the lengths the U.S. needed to go to to defeat terrorism. Paul, a libertarian critic of U.S. military intervention and the National Security Administration's metadata collection program, lashed out at Christie for his support of such anti-terrorism measures.
"I don't trust President Obama with our records. I know you gave him a big hug and if you want to give him a big hug again, go right ahead," Paul said.
"Senator Paul, you know the hugs that I remember are the hugs that I gave to the families who lost their people on September 11," Christie said as Paul rolled his eyes. "Those are the hugs I remember and those had nothing to do with politics, unlike what you're doing by cutting speeches on the floor of the Senate and putting them on the Internet within half an hour to raise money for your campaign and putting our country at risk.
"I was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on September 10th, 2001. The world changed enormously the next day and it happened in my state, so this is not theoretical to me," Christie said. "I went to the funerals. We lost friends of ours in the trade center. My own wife was two blocks from the trade center at her office. When you have to be responsible for doing this, you can do it and we did it for seven years in any office, respecting civil liberties and protecting the homeland."
Earlier in the debate Paul said that the U.S. should stop funding the "allies" of the Islamic State (IS). His choice of example suggested that the Iraqi Security Forces, whose U.S.-supplied Humvees have in the past fallen into IS hands, should stop receiving U.S. support.