Rand Paul: Christie Using 'Cloak of 9/11 Victims' to Attack Lawmakers

Sen. Rand Paul accused New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Monday of using "the cloak of 9/11 victims" to criticize him and other lawmakers for their non-interventionist views on foreign policy.

In the latest round of feuding among potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates, Paul took issue with some Christie comments made last Thursday suggesting there was a "strain of libertarianism going through both parties" that could be "dangerous" to the country.

According to The National Review, the GOP governor challenged Paul specifically and others to explain their non-interventionist views and reservations about National Security Agency surveillance programs to families of the people who were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"It's really, I think, kind of sad and cheap that he would use the cloak of 9/11 victims and say, 'Oh, I'm the only one who cares about these victims.' Hogwash," Paul told Fox News' Sean Hannity.

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“If he cared about protecting this country," Paul said, "maybe he wouldn’t be in this gimme-gimme-gimme, give me all the money you have in Washington or don’t have, and he’d be a little more fiscally responsive and know that the way we defend our country, the way we have enough money for national defense, is by being frugal and not being gimme-gimme all the time."

The "gimme" reference, according the National Review, came from previous criticism by Paul of Christie's demands for more relief aid to help New Jersey recover from last year's Hurricane Sandy.

Christie first stirred the pot with Paul on July 25, in Aspen, Colo., where he was critical of lawmakers who have called for an end, or at least new restrictions, to NSA surveillance programs aimed at stopping more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

"I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans [from the Sept. 11 attacks] and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have," Christie said at a forum sponsored by the Republican Governors Association.

In further response, Paul told Hannity that Christie's remarks were "flippant about privacy, flippant about the Fourth Amendment, and flippant about the Bill of Rights.”