WASHINGTON — Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul isn’t going quietly into the night.

Sure, he didn’t make it onto the main stage at Thursday night’s debate. And so he opted to not even participate in the so-called undercard debate.

But he isn’t sitting quietly in Washington.

In an interview with ABC News Radio, according to their correspondent Aaron Katersky, Paul’s message for the press was simple: He shot them the middle finger.

.@RandPaul has a message for the media today after his #debate demotion pic.twitter.com/jTa3uKhHdB — Aaron Katersky (@AaronKatersky) January 14, 2016

Paul, the Kentucky senator, has struggled to gain traction as he mounts a campaign for president. Many assumed he would be the heir apparent to many of the Libertarian-minded voters who helped his father pull respectable totals in the last two presidential election.

But unable to walk the delicate balance between appealing to Libertarians and establishment Republicans, Paul has failed to wiggle out of single-digits in the polls. And that finally resulted in him being excluded from the debate.

Paul insists this isn’t the end for him.

“We don’t consider that we have a second tier campaign. We are not going to announce to the American people that we are no longer in contention because we absolutely are in contention,” Paul told CNN on Thursday morning. “We have raised $25 million. We have a first tier campaign. We can’t accept an artificial designation by the media and by the party.”