WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Rand Paul, who was surrounded by screaming protesters when he and his wife left President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention speech at the White House, claimed without evidence on Friday that he had been “attacked by an angry mob” of the type that would be unleashed in Joe Biden’s America.
A video of the encounter with the protesters, who were yelling for Paul to say Breonna Taylor's name, shows no attack on Paul, only a police officer who was jostled while carrying a bicycle and then stumbled into the Kentucky senator’s shoulder.
Police and other security personnel formed a cordon around Paul and his wife as they left the White House shortly after midnight to walk a few blocks to their hotel, and the couple didn't appear to come into physical contact with the protesters and were unharmed.
Still, Paul tweeted that he “Just got attacked by an angry mob of over 100, one block away from the White House,” and he thanked police for “literally saving our lives from a crazed mob.”
In a television appearance on Friday, Paul linked the encounter with the protesters to lawlessness and a movement to defund police departments and said nobody would be safe in America if Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, wins the White House.
“We can’t have Joe Biden rule the country and have no police,” Paul told Fox News Channel's “Fox & Friends.”
Biden has said he does not want to defund police departments and claims Trump has proposed cutting money for local police support. Biden said he favors increasing funding for local police forces and deploying more social workers into police work.
Paul alleged, without offering any evidence, that the demonstrators were paid to create trouble on the streets of the nation’s...
