Rand Paul + Konstantin Kosachev = “engagement.” Photo by Sputnik.

Once upon a time, Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, likened Donald Trump to a singularly loathsome and pathetic J.R.R. Tolkien character. “I have compared him to Gollum from Lord of the Rings,” he quipped on Comedy Central’s “The Nightly Show.” Gollum — the hideous, friendless creature who cares only for his precious ring and will allow the world to destroy itself to protect it. Sounds about right.

On the same broadcast, Paul denounced Trump as “a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag,” citing his similarities to Hitler and Goebbels. Paul made these comments on 25 January 2016. At the time, he was still running for president. During the interminable slate of GOP debates, in fact, he’d distinguished himself as the candidate most opposed to Trump.

But after suspending his campaign a few weeks later, Rand Paul changed tack. On 1 April 2016, he told the Cincinnati Enquirer that while he would not endorse any candidate in the Republican primary, he would vote for Trump in November. “I’m from Kentucky,” Paul said, “and Hillary Clinton recently said she would put coal miners out of business, and she would put coal companies out of business.” This bit of cynical pandering is both untrue and a foolhardy reason for entrusting the nuclear launch codes to Gollum.

Less than a year later, after Paul objected to a treaty to allow Montenegro into NATO — parroting a Kremlin position — John McCain accused him on the Senate floor of “working for Vladimir Putin.” This quote got a lot of play in the political press, who love that sort of thing, but the consensus seemed to be that McCain was using hyperbolic language to make his point.

But what if this was a bad take? Few members of Congress were more antagonistic toward Putin than John McCain. Perhaps when he called Rand Paul a Russian asset, on the floor of the US Senate, he actually meant it.