Democratic CNN Commentator Explains Campaign Donation To Rand Paul: ‘This Was the Right Thing’

Democratic CNN commentator Jamal Simmons defended his past donation to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), claiming it was “the right thing” despite criticism from within his party.

Simmons, a longtime political operative and former communications director for Kamala Harris, joined Tuesday’s edition of Outfront to discuss President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to appoint Housing Finance Agency boss Bill Pulte as the acting director of National Intelligence. Pulte, who would replace former DNI Tulsi Gabbard, has no intelligence experience, and his Tuesday appointment drew sharp criticism from members of both parties.

“Yeah, we are focused on Pulte. And really, the problem is Donald Trump, right?” said Simmons of the appointment. “Because Donald Trump is the one who hired him, and he’s the one whose sort of siccing his staff to go after his enemies list.”

He went on to claim that the U.S. intelligence apparatus itself was deeply flawed, explaining the key issue that drove him to give money to Paul.

He said:

We have been dancing with this tiger forever since 9/11. We’ve been building up this huge national security infrastructure. It’s gobbling up all the data that it can find, all the information about Americans that it can find. And we’ve been betting that good people weren’t going to do bad things with this infrastructure. And now we’re at the point where that might not be the case. When I got hired in the White House, I got in trouble with some of the Democrats because in 2015, I gave money to Rand Paul. I gave money to Rand Paul because he had a filibuster against the Patriot Act.

And I wanted to say this was the right thing. At some point, he was the only United States senator who stood up and said maybe we should slow down before we continue to build this infrastructure. Now here we are with somebody who does not appear to be trying to use this infrastructure to protect us, but instead use it to punish Donald Trump’s enemies.

The Patriot Act, passed after 9/11, broadly expanded law enforcement surveillance power domestically. Paul launched an over ten-hour-long filibuster of the Senate in 2015 to protest the renewal of the act. In Trump’s second term, Paul has been a frequent critic and target of the president.

Watch above via CNN.

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