Rand Paul Surprises Us All, Praises Edward Snowden for Doing U.S. a Solid

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Complex Original

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Senator Rand Paul, better known by some as the Matthew McConaughey of politics, has thrown us something of a curve ball, folks. In a recent interview, the presidential hopeful took a surprisingly empathetic approach to "whistleblower" Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee and government contractor who leaked documents about unethical surveillance being used by the NSA.

In an interview with Yahoo News chief Washington correspondent Olivier Knox, Paul said that while he still maintains that Snowden, who was granted political asylum in Russia, should have to serve some kind of sentence (he's offered many times). On the other hand, he also believes that Snowden kind of did us a solid.

"I have mixed feelings. People are always saying hero or villain. We would not know about what our government has done and how our government lied to us without Edward Snowden. So he is a whistleblower and he did inform us of something the government was doing illegal."

"At the same time," he added, "he did do a service, and so all the people who want to chop his head off and shoot him and hang him, I think that’s a bit excessive." (That's definitely excessive, Rand, yes.) Check out the full interview above.

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