Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has learned not to get on President Donald Trump’s bad side.
The senator was ”uninvited” from the annual picnic at the White House Wednesday. The reason was the senator spoke against Trump’s tax cut and spending package — also known as the “big, beautiful bill,” The Hill reported.
Paul, who has been critical of the bill’s impact on the deficit, planned to attend the event on Thursday with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and 6-month-old grandson.
“I’ve just been told that I’ve been uninvited from the picnic; I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul said. “The White House is owned by the taxpayers, we are all members of it, every Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited, but I will be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.”
“I just find this incredibly petty,” he continued. “I have been, I think nothing but polite to the president. I have been an intellectual opponent, a public policy opponent, and he’s chosen now to uninvite me from the picnic and to say my grandson can’t come to the picnic.”
Paul said the move was immature.
“The level of immaturity is beyond words” he said, taking his retort to a personal level.
“I’m arguing from a true belief and worry that our country is mired in debt and getting worse, and they choose to react by uninviting my grandson to the public,” Paul said. “It really makes me lose a lot of respect I once had for Donald Trump.”
Paul was not given a reason for rescinded invitation to an event that has been held as a chance for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to socialize.
The bill is now before the Senate.
Paul, who has said he could not support the bill unless the $4 trillion debt limit was reduced, suggested the lack of an invitation did not make him inclined to vote for the bill.
“When they tell you your grandson can’t come to a picnic at the White House that all of Congress is allowed to come to, I don’t know, it just shows such a pettiness,” he said. “But they have shown over the last week they don’t care about my vote at all … because I’ve told them I can and would vote for the bill if the debt ceiling were taken off of it. So conceivably, there might be some situation in which they needed my vote. Instead they have decided to try to attack my character.”
Paul noted the rescinded invitation could have been at the hands of a White House staffer and not the president.
The senator has criticized White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who, in turn, went after Paul for not supporting the bill.
“It could be from lower-level staff members, but these are people that shouldn’t be working over there. But I mean, you have people that are basically going around casually talking about getting rid of habeas corpus,” he said.
“And the same people that are directing this campaign are the same people that casually would throw out parts of the Constitution and suspend habeas corpus,” Paul said. “So I think what it tells that they don’t like hearing me say stuff like that, and so they want to quiet me down. And it hasn’t worked, and so they’re going to try to attack me. They’re going to try to destroy me in other ways, and then do petty little things like social occasions or whatever.”
