The Chris Cuomo Project - What Rand Paul Says the Epstein Files Really Reveal
Episode Date: November 20, 2025Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) joins Chris Cuomo to break down why the fight over the Epstein files has become a test of public trust — and why he supported full disclosure even while warning people... not to expect bombshell revelations. Cuomo presses Paul on how Washington keeps feeding suspicion through secrecy and mixed messages, what real accountability would look like, and why both parties are too comfortable letting the public assume the worst. They also dig into the surprise hemp ban buried in the shutdown bill, Paul’s clashes with Mitch McConnell over industry pressure, and how a $25 billion sector got kneecapped without a real debate. From Venezuela to war powers to the politics of fear inside Congress, Paul explains why he believes leaders in both parties are avoiding tough choices as the country drifts deeper into dysfunction. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: For a limited time, our listeners are getting an additional $20 Off with code TAKE20. Head to Superpower.com and use code TAKE20 at checkout for $20 off your membership. Take advantage of Soul’s Black Friday-Cyber Monday deal now! For a limited time, get 40% off your entire order! Go to http://GetSoul.com and use the code CUOMO. Ready to give Rugiet a try? Get 15% off your first order by going to http://rugiet.com/CUOMO and using code CUOMO. Disclaimer - Rugiet prescriptions are compounded medications, available only if prescribed following an online consultation with a licensed clinician. Compounded drugs can be prescribed by federal law, but are not FDA-approved and have not been reviewed by the FDA for safety, effectiveness, or manufacturing. Individual results may vary. Full safety information available at Rugiet.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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What's really driving the Epstein Files release?
What's really behind banning hemp in favor of bourbon?
What?
Senator Rand Paul has the answers.
I'm Chris Cuomo.
Welcome to Chris Cuomo Project.
The man at the center who created that moment when everyone was saying,
why is Rand Paul talking about hemp? What happened to a clean CR? Why did this get snuck in by Mitch McConnell? And for whom and who was in favor? And what does that tell us about what the future is for personal choice, for liberty, let alone for medicinal value of what has been proven to help millions and millions of Americans? And what does hemp inform us about what's actually happening with the Epstein process and what's actually happening within our government?
Is it really about what it's supposed to be anymore?
A U.S. Senator takes this on and gives you the truth.
All right, Senator, thank you very much for taking the opportunity.
I appreciate it.
Glad to be with you.
All right, let's touch on one thing that's going on,
but then I really want to take a deep dive on what happened with hemp
and why you tried to stop it and where you think we can get with it.
The Epstein Files are an obsession now in politics.
Why do you believe that is and what do you think happens with the Senate vote?
You know, I think the Epstein Files represent something more than the particulars.
They represent this idea that people are distrustful of government and justice.
They think that perhaps justice might be different if you're rich versus if you're poor.
If you know somebody, you might get treated differently.
And that's something that's really bad for government to have people lose trust in the
idea that justice is impartial or that justice is blind. And so I hadn't been too involved in this
issue. I haven't really thought that there was some momentous thing that was to be gotten.
But it represents the idea of impartial justice. And so I voted for the transference. I voted a
couple times for that. And now it looks like it goes to the president's desk. And I hope he will
reveal as much as humanly possible to kind of get this behind us. What's your sense of why
more hasn't come out?
You know, I don't really know. I think it also could be that nothing comes out that, you know, we've, we know most of the people that have been on the planes. We know most of the people have had an association, you know, with Epstein. I don't know that there is going to be any earth-shattering or groundbreaking revelation. I really just don't know. I mean, I'm open to hearing it and I support the transparency. That's as much as I know.
Are you worried that the transparency won't land that way that people are so convinced they're smoking guns in there on either side that they'll never be satisfied and this makes it worse?
Yeah, I think that that's true of a lot of things in government.
I think people will become more distrustful of government on many fronts.
I would say, you know, I would put the hesitancy on vaccines on the same par, that people are more and more disbelieving what their government tells them, because the government hasn't been honest on a few simple things.
You've been in the Senate now over 10 years.
What's changed?
The debt's gotten a lot greater.
the interest on the debt has gotten greater.
The problems we have are bigger.
I think there's actually less resistance to big government and to debt now.
Some of that is, and this is one of my biggest disappointments now,
is that when you have a Republican in the White House,
people tend to want to support the team.
It's shirts and skins.
We're going to support our guy,
but they become less fiscally responsible in the process.
You know, last year, you remember when you remember,
this presidential election, Biden inflation, Biden spending, Biden economics. But the Biden spending
levels that many conservative Republicans were against, they're now four. And then topsy-turvy,
the Democrats were all for the Biden spending levels, but now they're Republican spending levels.
They're identical, and the Democrats were opposed. The disappointing thing is that people
are voting based on shirts and skins, but not on the debt being a problem, whether you're a
Republican or Democrat. The debt is a problem.
Senator, I'm watching the shutdown negotiation as it winds down.
Senator Rand Paul says, hold on a second.
We have to be aware of what's happening with hemp.
It is immediately dismissed.
Rand Paul is making a stunt.
Rand Paul this.
What hemp?
This is silly.
What did you make of that moment and why you chose it?
Well, it's funny because a lot of people think I chose the moment.
I didn't choose the moment.
I didn't put the provision banning hemp products into the bill.
And so a lot of people, this is a very common response online.
They're like, why would you choose to do this now?
The government needs to be open.
And I agree.
I want the government open.
But it's my job to debate things when they come to the floor.
So Mitch McConnell stuck this provision in after I had it removed in the summer.
I objected.
They needed my consent to move forward quickly.
So they left it out of the bill.
They airdropped it back in.
So you remember all this talk of we need a clean CR, no policy, we're just going to open government, a clean CR.
But what they put in there on language on hemp completely overturns about 25 states that already have their own rules.
Like my state, I live in a conservative Republican state, but we regulate hemp and we decided that you can have a hemp drink with five milligrams of THC in it.
And that's what our law is.
But McConnell's law is now going to overturn Kentucky law.
It's one of the most insulting slaps in the face.
And it's also this primitive notion that bourbon is fine, but, you know, THC is wrong.
But then we also had cannabis state senators voting against it because the cannabis industry saw it as competition.
So alcohol saw it as competition.
Cannabis saw it as competition.
And then people from the Stone Age like McConnell, who saw Reefer Madness in 1925, live at the matinee, are still thinking.
the world's going to the devil.
We are going to all die if the reefer madness is exploded.
And really, it's a lot more complicated than that.
I had people come up to me on the floor of the Senate,
and they said, well, my mom takes a gummy to sleep at night.
And it's like, who am I to tell somebody's mom or grandmom
or them themselves that has trouble sleeping?
Half of America has trouble sleeping.
Who am I to say, oh, you can take Ambien,
you can take Percocet.
You can take whatever legal heroin
the pharmaceutical companies will sell you,
but you can't take a gummy
with a little bit of THC in it from a plant.
So I don't know.
I'm disappointed in it,
but it's a big industry.
It's a $25 billion industry
is going to be wiped out.
And there's a lot of the people
who use these products that are mad now,
and I tell them call Mitch McConnell
and frankly call some of the Democrats
who voted to ban it too.
It was a, I don't know,
I'm not done fighting on.
and we're going to see if we can get it reversed.
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you're hearing because I have to tell you. I have had a lot of people reach out because they know
I'm open that using hemp-derived THC, why do I use hemp instead of marijuana? Because it's not a
psychotropic drug. It doesn't give me, I don't need a trip. My life and my work is enough of a
trip, Senator. I don't need anything fantasy. Reality is scary enough. But it has helped me not
need alcohol or use alcohol for relaxation. It works for me. It works for my joints. And I've had so many
people with pain maladies, with psychological maladies, with real disease that they use the hemp for
symptomatic relief. And it seems like all those people got a middle thing.
from this cabal that got together just to preference alcohol and weed against their interests.
Yeah, and you're right. It's been a movement. I have friends. There are many people I know
they're trying to have less alcohol. And like I say, look, well, I'm an advocate. I've actually
never tried it. I, you know, it's not a big deal, but I just don't, I don't use hemp products,
but I am for freedom. And it's, it always reminds me. And this is one of the most stark things I've
in politics. Remember when Romney got the nomination and a young man came up in a wheelchair
with MS and he was going to all the debates and he looked at Mitt Romney and he said,
would you deny me the right to use medical marijuana for my MS? And Romney looked right at him
and said, yep. But the callousness of that, you know, the uncaring callousness and also the presumption
that you know what's best. And somehow a pharmaceutical company that makes billions of dollars
Their product is okay, but it's not okay to have marijuana or THC for this.
And really, frankly, it's just none of your damn business.
It's we are adults.
I'm fine with the rules keeping it out of kids' hands.
But by making it illegal, you'll actually drive it back into the hands of kids because it'll go back to the black market.
And guess what?
When you buy things from a drug dealer around the corner, they don't check your ID.
When you go to the store, they'll check your ID.
So legal things are actually much better control than illegal.
things. Yeah, we saw that with prohibition, right? And, you know, it becomes a taboo and you have a
secondary market. And also, I mean, look, you're going to take this away. Where are kids going to go?
They're going to go back to alcohol, right? We've seen a reduction in underage drinking. This cannot
help with that. And I don't know the last time I heard of a DUI for hemp, you know, or anybody
getting hurt because of hemp, we're being addicted to hemp and certainly out.
is one of the substances that kills more people than just about anything else in our society.
Yeah, it was kind of lame to hear some of these people from the alcohol industry that were
lobbying against it. But to have the alcohol industry sit around a big table with me
and they sound like mad that they would ban alcohol, but they just want to ban hemp, but they're
still fine with alcohol. The hypocrisy of it is, you know, comes in bounds.
Do you think you have any chance of getting this removed?
from becoming law.
We're talking with the people who are in the industry that are going to lose their jobs.
My initial idea, and this is I'm going to present next week, I'll put it in as a bill,
is to say that if your state has already passed a framework for hemp,
that that supersedes the federal law.
Now, traditionally, if the courts interpret it, federal law, trumps state law.
But if you write a federal law that says specifically that this federal law trumps your other federal law,
if you have a state regulatory framework, that might work.
And actually, it would be an impetus for states that want to have him to go ahead and regulate it
and ban it from kids under 21 and have some rules.
And there frankly need to be some rules.
And, you know, for example, you can't go to the store and buy a gummy that has five milligrams of THC in it
and it has 100 milligrams in it.
That's fraud.
And it's also a crime because you're endangering somebody by selling them something that isn't
what it says it is.
And we have laws against it already.
But you can put that in a regulatory framework.
You can decide about how much is a reasonable amount in a package.
And these are things a lot of the states were already doing.
But the irony of it is, is the states that had limitations, you can't buy it under 21,
all of that's being superseded by federal law that doesn't do anything on age,
just sort of bans the product, but doesn't do anything about the age limits.
How much power is there in terms of the membership in favor of banning hemp?
Do you think it's something where they just went along with men?
Mitch because it was convenient in the moment and whoever was motivating him was motivating
it, but it's not that widespread.
I think it's like a lot of issues in Washington.
I think there were special interests involved that lobbied him.
But it's also like a lot of interest that if we were to poll this issue in Kentucky,
I'm guessing 60% of the people would say that's your decision to make.
If you're an adult, you can do what you choose.
And I think that's what a poll would show.
So representative government is good in some ways in that it slows democracy down.
democracy doesn't go like a runaway train too much right or left.
And representative democracy is helpful, but sometimes it slows the will of people.
And sometimes it's like a decade's worth.
I would say the idea of marijuana being legal now in like 20-some-odd states,
I would say it took probably 15 years after the public had already decided they were okay with this
to have it become law because it takes a while to people in the legislature last a while
and they last sometimes beyond where the public opinion is,
and they're representing maybe a different set of the public
than actually is the current set of the public.
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So what does that mean to you in terms of your personal mission? I was an avid reader of a lot of your father's writing.
and political philosophy. And I remember when you came in 2010, 2010, 2011, and you had a very
specific personal mandate as a doctor and as someone who believes in individual freedom and
fighting against the state and encroachment. How do you feel about the mission 14 years in? Do you
believe that you can still do what you wanted to do in government, or has the game changed?
I think the arguments are just as important or more important.
So, for example, if you ask me what one of the most important things that I debate,
it would be whether or not to send your kids or my kids or somebody's kids to war.
There is probably no more important debate.
If I'm not here, there aren't many people that will argue that most wars of aggression
or most wars, offensive wars, shouldn't be fought, that we should fight when we're attacked,
that Congress should vote.
people like, oh, Congress is so feckless.
And I always remind them that when we have been attacked,
we've been fairly unified.
After 9-11, the vote was 434 to 1.
I think it was 99 to 0 in the Senate.
When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, the same way,
nearly unanimous, when we've been less unanimous,
has really been wars we might have avoided,
you know, the Iraq war, for one.
You know, the vote was much closer.
The intelligence was in many ways fabricated or exaggerated.
And it was just a war.
we just had no reason to be involved with, and it took our eye off of what was going on in
Afghanistan, etc. But I think if I'm not here to debate those things, so I still consider
that I'm doing something that I think is important, one of the lines that I've added to virtually
every foreign relations bill that comes through is nothing in this bill is to be construed as a
use, as an authorization of use of force. And I add that every time because one day we were here
and we flew out to go home
and they passed a unanimous consent bill
condemning and saying we ought to set up
a no-fly zone in Libya.
This was under President Obama.
President Obama then announced a no-fly zone.
We got involved in military hostilities
to get rid of Gaddafi, and yet
there'd been no vote, and he pointed to that vote
and said, oh, you know, they voted
unanimously to let me do this.
And so I've tried very hard
to be a voice on foreign policy
to say, let's, you know,
let's re-examine this
in a thoughtful way. The idea of blowing up 83 people on boats coming off of Venezuela.
We don't know their names. We've been presented with no evidence of their crime. We don't know if
they're armed. And when we do capture them, we just send them home. There's got to be drugs
floating in the water, I would think, when you blow up the boat. Do we scoop up the drugs,
test the drugs? We know that the Coast Guard, when they examined boats off of Miami, one in four
boats that they board does not have any drugs on board. Are we really willing to do?
to accept the odds of 25% of the boats were blowing up might not be drug boats. And even if they
do have drugs, when did the death penalty summary execution without a trial be the punishment for
drugs? That's never been our policy. And yet it probably disturbed me more than almost anything
I've heard from this administration when J.D. Vance spouted off and said, this is the highest and
most glorious use of our military. And it's like, what kind of callous, thoughtless person would say
something like that. Someone who's driven by personal ambition in a moment of specific harshness
where the American people seem open to harshness as strength, which has not really been
emblematic of what our ideals are. You know, the Epstein thing, the files have to come out.
I don't like the rationales that are being offered up for why. I don't believe it's about the
survivors. But that's my opinion. Venezuela, not being a topic of discussion, when it is being
surrounded by a military blockade of all these types of assets,
Republicans were against the level of support in Ukraine because it was too much.
It didn't serve our interests.
And they are silent on what's happening around Venezuela, except for you.
Explain that to me.
People fear that if you're somehow not for this war, that you're somehow sympathetic to socialism.
You know, I wrote a book, The Case Against Socialism.
And in the opening chapter, I describe a young 16-year-old girl who's head of a gang
and her gang's territories, four dumpsters, outside of restaurants, and they were to get
the morsels of leftover food from the restaurant.
That's how desperate socialism has made them.
The average person's lost 30 pounds because socialism doesn't produce enough food for people.
It's a terrible economic system.
So I'm quite a critic of it, but I'm not in favor of people say, well, why not take them out?
And it's like, well, the guy next door is kind of lean socialist too, Petro.
Should we take him out too?
And he's now been critical of Trump.
Is he next?
And it's like, you know, South America at any point in time has two or three socialists that are in charge of countries.
Is it our job to replace them and what chaos comes from that?
And, you know, it might be, it happens and then the Democratic government takes over and everything swell.
Or it might be we have civil war, you know, that, you know, we have to send troops down there
and 5,000 of our, you know, 10 years later, all of a sudden we have lost 5,000 more soldiers,
you know, like we did in Iraq. So we get around a lot of these problems by going to Congress
first and not letting presidents do it. But there is no resistance on the Republican side.
They are, they are afraid. They are frightened to cross him, and he's become more involved
in primaries than any president ever has. And they're just afraid, even the ones who have a correct
instinct or afraid to say anything.
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Last question for you, Senator,
and thank you so much for the time and opportunity.
You're always welcome here wherever I am.
the pushback against socialism is you know they're different forms
Germany is democratic socialism they're doing great
it's a democracy but they provide more of a social safety net
they do taxation differently and they're doing very well so
the socialists when they say that they're socialists they don't mean
Venezuela they mean Germany yeah as long as they don't mean the
national socialism of Hitler here's the
point. The point is you're right. But most people, and I think this case, in the case against socialism,
we talk a lot about Sweden, not Germany so much, but we talk about the countries that people
in America have called socialist. And we try to come to a determination of, are they socialist
or not? And it turns out when you rank countries for economic freedom, Sweden often ranks
ahead of the United States. They aren't a socialist, you know, paradise in any way. They don't
really have significant price controls. They have private property. And they have a private stock.
market. One of the famous economists of the last century from a free market point of view
is a guy named Ludwig von Mises. And he wrote that one of the definitions really, if you're
looking for just a basic definition of whether something still has capitalism versus socialism
is that they still remain a stock market where the prices are open and freely fluctuating
because those prices send signals to the economy about what to produce. And Sweden in many
ways was actually more free market. They had a lower corporate tax. Their corporate
tax was 20% for the last 30 years, ours was 35 until 2017. We came down to theirs. They have a
social, like the safety net. Yeah, they have lots of welfare. They have like a welfare state.
But the interesting thing is they don't do what we do. We have somewhat of welfare state,
maybe not quite as generous as Sweden's, but we don't tax people for it. We just borrow for
ours. In Sweden, they tax that hell out of you. And a lot of the Swedes are kind of fine,
whether they're used to high taxes and they're used to this safety net, but their income tax
on 60,000 is a 60% bracket.
So they pay a hell of a lot of taxes.
And in the U.S., we have this sort of, it's a worse situation because both parties kind of
want a welfare state.
They want a warfare state, but neither one of really want to pay for it.
And so we borrow.
We're borrowing $2 trillion a year, and it can't go on forever.
I think it's going to end badly.
and there is the potential for crisis.
There's potential for internal war,
there's potential for civil war.
You know, Ray Dalio is going around
talking about a lot of this stuff now.
And I don't know if he's right about the timing,
but I think he and others are right to worry
about the chaos that comes if a currency,
particularly the world's, you know, reserve currency,
if it were to lose value in a sudden fashion,
if there were a sudden loss of confidence,
what would happen, it would be chaos.
streets. That's why you guys got to focus on crypto. The idea that that's some kind of answer
as part of our reserve. It makes funny money look legit. Senator Rand Paul, I appreciate
you coming on. You are always an invitation away from being wherever I am to discuss what
matters to your constituency and in your opinion to the country. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I got to say, Senator Rand Paul, candid, and I believe correct, certainly about him.
And I suspect he's right about Epstein also in terms of the expectations,
why he's going along with it, and what is really driving it?
What do you think?
Let me know so we can get after it.
I'm Chris Cuomo.
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My brothers and sisters, the problems are real.
so was our approach. Let's get after it.
