Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he’s “thinking about” launching a 2028 bid to be the next president.
“We’re thinking about it — I would say 50-50,” Paul said. “We’ll make a decision after the election.”
Paul made the comments in a CBS Sunday Morning interview set to air this weekend. CBS’s Robert Costa pressed Paul on a March Washington Examiner headline, titled, “Rand Paul sounds like he’s running for president.”
“I don’t know yet,” Paul said with a laugh. “So maybe they know something I don’t know.”
Pundits have postulated that Paul could launch a 2028 presidential campaign to mark a more libertarian challenge to a potential MAGA successor candidate, like Vice President JD Vance. In the preview of his interview with CBS, Paul described himself as one of, if not the only, true free-market, libertarian forces left in the Senate, but said he believes “there still is a desire among business” for politicians like that.
“It may make the so-called libertarian vote, which might not be big enough to ever win anything, if you combine that with the Chamber of Commerce and the traditional business community that doesn’t like protectionism, there may be a force out there for a different direction from the party, other than being continued to be led by populism,” Paul said.
Paul and Vance are among the names most talked about regarding the 2028 Republican presidential primary race, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio. None of them has confirmed or denied plans to launch a bid.
Paul — staunch in his fiscal hawk and anti-war stance in the Senate — has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump and MAGA hardliners for his chamber votes against the Republican caucus.
The Kentucky Republican recently voted against the confirmation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, raising concerns about Mullin’s previous comments on political violence. The two engaged in a heated exchange during Mullin’s confirmation hearing, in which Paul pressed him about comments he made sympathizing with the man who assaulted Paul in 2017.
RAND PAUL SOUNDS LIKE HE’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT
“He loves voting ‘NO’ on everything, he thinks it’s good politics, but it’s not,” Trump said about Paul after he voted ‘no’ on the One Big Beautiful Bill because of its increase to the debt ceiling.
Paul told CBS he would wait for the 2026 midterm elections to decide whether or not to run in 2028. Paul is not up for reelection, but his like-minded Kentucky fiscal hawk Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is. Massie’s primary race against Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein will be a closely watched litmus test for the more libertarian, anti-war policies that Paul aligns with.
