Front-running GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump would end up "the largest loser of any candidate ever in the history of the country" if he were the party's standard-bearer in 2016, Sen. Rand Paul tells
Newsmax TV.
In a no-holds-barred interview Ed Berliner, host of "The Hard Line" (weekdays at 9 p.m. ET on Newsmax TV), the Kentucky Republican –
running well behind Trump in national polls and
struggling with fundraising – says the brash billionaire's "attitude" is "so polarizing" that if he were the Republican presidential nominee, "we'd get just swamped in a landslide."
"There's still time… and this is why it's such a disaster and why Donald Trump would be probably the largest loser of any candidate ever in the history of the country if he were our nominee – because he so polarized the debate."
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"Do you think women are going to nominate some guy who judges people by their appearance and calls another candidate 'ugly?'" he asks. "Do you think they're going to nominate somebody who implies that most Hispanics are rapists and drug dealers?"
"Ultimately,' Paul argues, "the majority of Republicans will wake up and say, 'oh my goodness, we can't nominate this. This would be a disaster for our party and for the country.'"
Paul says America won't buy it, answering with a definitive "absolutely" when asked if he thought Americans are too smart to elect Trump.
Trump and Paul have been lobbing verbal grenades since they took the stage Aug. 6 at the first GOP candidates' debate, where Paul questioned Trump's party loyalty and Trump implied Paul was being bought by donors.
Things went steadily downhill over the summer and early fall, with Paul questioning Trump's GOP bona fides, and accusing him of being a
"fake conservative" and Trump urging the lawmaker
to get out of the race.
Paul continues his assault on "The Hard Line."
"He's the worst nominee that we could possibly think of and part of the reason is he's not really a Republican," Paul says of Trump.
"I mean he's recently become a Republican, but he's been a Democrat for most of his life, for 65 of his 69 years he was a Democrat… he's supported liberal policies, bailing out the bank, the government stimulus where we borrow money and just throw it away."
"He also supports using eminent domain to take private property from individual property owners, small property owners, and give it to big corporations like his," he adds. "This is his mode of doing business and he's jolly well with it, he loves it."
Paul acknowledges that Trump is comfortably ahead in the national polls, but says "it's because we're still early and people haven't started looking really seriously at the record."
"When you do a poll of 200 people and 85 percent of them have not yet decided, but you say, 'oh no, no, really, who would you pick if you were going to pick? Even though you're not yet decided?' That's a very soft poll," Paul says.
"Right before the caucus in Iowa, you're going to see a reshuffling and you might have five or six people in double digits…. It's going to be a free-for-all and people will have to stay up late that night to find out who wins Iowa."
Paul insists in the end, "people are going to have to stop and think who can best win in the fall [of 2016]."
"And I am positioned to go after independent voters and the young voters in a way no other candidate is," he declared.
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