Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) described the recovery from a savage attack by his neighbor last year as a "living hell" during an interview Sunday on CBS.
Paul suffered bruised lungs and fractured ribs in November after he was tackled from behind while mowing his lawn at his home in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
His neighbor, Rene Boucher, was arrested for the assault, and the motivations behind it remain unclear, although Boucher's lawyer claimed the attack was because of disagreement over Paul's landscaping practices.
"Face The Nation" host John Dickerson asked Paul at the outset how he was recovering from the attack.
"It was sort of, I guess, a living hell for the first four or five weeks," he said. "Couldn't get out of bed without assistance. Six broken ribs, damage to my lungs. Two bouts of pneumonia. It was really a tough go of it, but each day I feel a little bit better. This last month, I've been doing better."
Paul was also at the Republican baseball practice in June when a far-left fanatic shot and injured several people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R., La.). He said, regardless of the motives, there needed to be strong deterrence to violence against elected officials.
"We usually don't ask if someone's raped or mugged ... why the person did it," Paul said. "We want punishment and deterrence, and I guess that's what I'm mostly about. I just don't think of any kind of motivation or justification, whether it's political or personal, to attack someone who's unaware from behind in their own yard."