OAN Staff Blake Wolf
4:15 PM – Sunday, December 21, 2025
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul criticized President Donald Trump’s military actions and increased hostility to Venezuela, labeling the seizure of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers as “a provocation and a prelude to war.”
In a Sunday interview on ABC News, Paul (R-Ky.) made his opposition to foreign military interventionism in the Caribbean known, citing concerns of an all-out war with Venezuela.
“I’m not for confiscating these liners. I’m not for blowing up these boats of unarmed people that are suspected of being drug dealers. I’m not for any of this,” Paul stated.
Paul went on to note that President Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence after being convicted of conspiring to import hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States and related weapons offenses.
In his pardon announcement, President Trump argued that Hernandez was treated unfairly, calling his conviction a “horrible witch hunt.”
“Why is the former president Hernandez of Honduras, who was in jail for 45 years, why is he released?” Paul questioned. “So some narco-terrorists are really OK and other narco-terrorists we’re going to blow up. And then some of them, if they’re not designated as a terrorist, we might arrest them.”
Paul’s comments came as the United States Coast Guard pursued a third Venezuelan oil tanker, after seizing a second tanker on Saturday.
Paul’s opposition partially hinges on the fear that the United States could get bogged down in another disastrous multi-decade regime change war in Venezuela, similarly to the failed U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
In the interview, Paul went on to oppose Vice President JD Vance as the heir apparent to President Trump after being asked about the future of the GOP.
“I think there needs to be representatives in the Republican Party who still believe international trade is good, who still believe in free market capitalism, who still believe in low taxes. See, it used to separate conservatives and liberals that conservatives thought it was a spending problem. We didn’t want more revenue. We wanted less spending,” Paul explained, criticizing President Trump’s tariff approach of growing out of the federal deficit rather than cutting spending.
“But now all these pro terror protectionists, they love taxes, and so they tax, tax, tax, and then they brag about all the revenue coming in. That has never been a conservative position. So I’m going to continue to try to lead a conservative free market wing of the party, and we’ll see where things lead over time,” he continued.
“And that’s not JD Vance?” asked ABC News co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
“No,” Paul replied.
The interview then shifted towards a discussion about the recent deaths of U.S. servicemembers in Syria, in which Paul urged President Trump to remove American troops from the troubled country.
“You know, it’s hard not to want to hit back when they kill some of our own. But I would like to go back, really, to the first Trump administration when he said he didn’t want the troops there. There’s like 900 troops, maybe a thousand, maybe 1,500. They’re not enough to fight a war. They’re not enough to be an effective strategic force. What they are is a target and a tripwire.”
“Donald Trump ought to do what Donald Trump proposed in his first administration, what Ronald Reagan did after the 1983 bomb. He left. There’s no reason for us to be in Syria. We need to leave Syria and not be a trip wire to getting back involved in another war,” Paul added.
Additionally, Paul concluded by pitching his own solution to the issue of healthcare while criticizing the Democrats’ solution of introducing more subsidies.
“Look, we have health care in our country for poor people. It’s called Medicaid. All of the rest of this stuff has not worked. Obamacare has been a failure. President Obama said it would bring premiums down. Premiums gone through the roof. Every time we give more subsidies, the premiums go higher,” Paul stated.
“I have a plan that says everybody in this marketplace, and it’s only about 4%, everybody in this marketplace should be able to go to Amazon or Costco or Sam’s Club and as a group, a large group – millions of people in the group – negotiate with Big Insurance to bring prices down. It’s the only proposal out there that – that has a chance of bringing prices down,” he added.
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