Recovering from his neighbor’s unprovoked assault as he cut his grass in November was “a living hell for the first four or five weeks,” according to Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.
“It was sort of, I guess, a living hell for the first four or five weeks. Couldn’t get out of bed without assistance, six broken ribs, damage to my lungs, two bouts of pneumonia. It was really a tough go of it,” Paul said on CBS News’ “Face The Nation.”
“But each day I feel a little bit better. This last month I’ve been doing better,” he said.
Paul was cutting his grass on Nov. 3, 2017, when out of nowhere 59-year-old Rene Boucher assaulted him. Boucher, an anesthesiologist, is also the inventor of the Therm-a-Vest, a cloth vest used to alleviate back pain. He was arrested by Kentucky authorities and charged with fourth-degree assault.
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Paul was also present during the lethal assault on June 14, 2017, against a group of Republican legislators practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity between members of the two major parties. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-Mich.), was shot in the groin and nearly died. Three others on the field at the time were also shot.
James Hodgkinson, a left-wing Illinois activist, mounted the June attack. He used a semi-automatic rifle and died of wounds he suffered during the ensuing 10-minute shootout with U.S. Capitol Police and members of the Alexandria, Virginia, police.
“I was 10 feet from a young staffer who was shot in the leg,” Paul said of the baseball field violence.
Paul dismissed the swirling controversy sparked by author Michael Wolff’s claims in a new book that President Donald Trump has “lost it” mentally.
“I do think, from my experience, when I look at the president, I’ve been around the president quite a bit, I’ve been in the White House quite a bit with him,” Paul told CBS News’ John Dickerson. “I can give you one example that I think really shows his great insight and ability to cut through to the chase and do things that ordinary politicians don’t do.”
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“And that’s when I took [to] him the idea of letting individuals join together to buy insurance across state lines. Every politician, Republican and bureaucrat in Washington, said we couldn’t do it, and they hadn’t done it in 30 years. He looked at the original law, he told his lawyers, ‘Look at the original law and see if the interpretation of these previous government attorneys have been correct.'”
Paul continued, “And he had the wherewithal just to say: ‘No. We’re going to let individuals join these groups so they can get cheaper insurance and perhaps better insurance as well and perhaps get insurance for people who don’t have insurance.’ But he did that because he’s different than any other politician.”
Senior editor Mark Tapscott can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Rand Paul, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article image: Rand Paul, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)
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