Sen. Rand Paul said he expects to visit the White House to discuss the GOP effort to repeal and replace Obamacare “eventually.” | Getty Congress Rand stands up to Trump on Obamacare In a POLITICO interview, the Kentucky senator says the president's move to single him out won't work. 'I feel emboldened.'

Rand Paul is not backing down.

Hours after President Donald Trump exhorted the Kentucky senator to get behind his Obamacare replacement plan, Paul reiterated his opposition in an interview with POLITICO.


“Republicans across the country are unified on repeal, not on replace,” Paul said Wednesday morning, after Trump singled him out in a tweet. The libertarian-leaning lawmaker insisted that Republicans should vote on stand-alone legislation to repeal the Democratic health care law and figure out later what would replace it. He said he told the president as much in a telephone conversation Monday.

“The compromise that I ... have represented to him is to separate the bill into two separate bills," Paul said.

Trump’s targeting of Paul was a gift for Republican leaders trying to shepherd their health care legislation through Congress. The Kentucky Republican has a national following, and he's been loudly protesting how GOP leaders wrote the bill, dubbing it “Obamacare-lite.”

Paul is more daring and has more influence than any other individual opponent of the GOP to emerge so far. GOP leaders have privately chafed at his unabashed attempts to stoke an intraparty war over Obamacare.

But the president's targeting of Paul — the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Trump plans to travel to Kentucky on Saturday, though the purpose of the trip is unclear — doesn't seem to be working, at least not yet.

"I feel sure that my friend @RandPaul will come along with the new and great health care program because he knows Obamacare is a disaster!" Trump tweeted.

But Paul made clear he’s not about to reverse himself.

“I don’t feel isolated by this. I actually feel emboldened,” Paul, who clashed at times with Trump during the Republican presidential primary last year, said of his reaction to the president’s attention.

Paul read Trump’s tweet as a signal that the White House is “open to negotiation and that they realize that we have the numbers to stop the Obamacare-lite bill. … They are concerned because every conservative I know has been called to the White House” to talk about Obamacare.

The GOP plan, dubbed the American Health Care Act, would eliminate Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and replace the law’s insurance subsidies with tax credits, among other provisions. Conservatives were quick to dismiss it as Obamacare in a different form, even as House Speaker Paul Ryan and White House officials defended the proposal as in keeping with free-market Republican ideals.

While Trump has had other former campaign rivals to the White House to meet with him, Paul hasn’t received an invitation. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his wife, Heidi, were to dine with Trump on Wednesday evening. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) did so last month. And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had lunch with Trump on Tuesday.

Paul said he expects to visit the White House “eventually.” The senator’s staff has been in contact with administration officials since Trump’s tweet.

Paul has developed the most independent record of any Republican in the Senate since Trump became president. He voted against Trump’s nominee for CIA director and was the lone “no” on the Republican budget.

Paul is now taking his most adversarial stand yet, leading a coordinated attempt to derail Ryan’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s quest to follow through on the party’s long-held promise to kill Obamacare.

Other Republicans backed out of Paul’s mischievous search last week for a physical copy of the House’s draft bill. And the recently reelected Paul and Mike Lee (R-Utah) were the only senators to show up with House Freedom Caucus members on Tuesday to lash the House's just-released bill. Sometime ally Cruz was nowhere to be seen; aides cited a “scheduling conflict.”

“He’s principled. I think he’s right to say [the process] hasn’t been transparent. But how does this movie end?” Graham said of Paul. “You’re not going to pass a bill without refundable tax credits. You’ve got to have some mechanism to help low-income Americans. So he’s on the other side of almost all Republicans.”

Graham said Paul’s proposal to separate repeal from replace would require cooperation from Democrats. The repeal vote can be done with a simple majority using a special budget mechanism, but a stand-alone replacement bill would need 60 votes in the Senate and significant Democratic support.

Spicer: Trump in 'sell mode' on health care bill White House press secretary Sean Spicer talks about health care on Wednesday.

“This idea that you repeal the bill, you have Medicaid expansion as a separate vote and all the Democrats will vote for it? That ain’t happening,” Graham said. “Rand is totally misjudging where Democrats are at.”

Paul became famous taking on his own party. He almost always ends up losing, but he garners huge attention along the way — and seems to revel in it.

Paul gained prominence with a filibuster attacking the United States’ drone program and delaying the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director in 2013 (Brennan was eventually confirmed). He forced a debate on a war authorization at the end of 2014, but the matter never made it to the Senate floor. Paul infamously clashed with McConnell, his Kentucky colleague, in 2015, briefly causing key surveillance programs to lapse.

During the campaign, Paul called Trump a “fake conservative,” while Trump argued Paul shouldn’t have even qualified for the presidential debates because of his poor standing in polls.

Paul now says his relationship with Trump is “fine.” A White House official declined to comment on private conversations with the president.

But Paul’s relationships with other Republican lawmakers have taken a hit. House committee leaders hand-delivered a copy of their bill to Paul’s office after he spent several days attacking them for a secretive process, making sure to document the handover on Twitter.

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Republican aides point out that Paul has previously supported refundable tax credits, a major part of the current GOP plan. Others highlight that Paul’s own position on health care has shifted dramatically over the past two months. He insisted to Trump that Obamacare be repealed and replaced at the same time but later told the president that they should be handled separately.

Paul said in the interview that in theory he still supports simultaneous repeal and replace. But given intraparty divisions on everything from Medicaid to Planned Parenthood to tax credits, he said it’s simply too messy to try to jam something through now.

“Now I’m thinking we’re so far apart. I never believed in my wildest nightmares that we’re going to keep the Obamacare taxes or that we’re going to have a new entitlement program or that we’re going to keep the individual mandate in another form,” Paul said.

Republican leaders believe that conservatives like Paul will fall in line.

“I still find it hard to believe that any of our members are going to vote against” a bill to end Obamacare, even if the replacement isn’t what they want, said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 Senate Republican.

But that’s no sure thing, given Paul’s track record of standing firm against leadership’s wishes. During the fight over renewing the PATRIOT Act, McConnell gave Paul a week to cool off and hopefully compromise in a way that would keep intelligence programs up and running. But it was a rare miscalculation: Paul returned to Washington after a congressional recess more dug-in than ever, and the programs briefly expired.

“I don’t think that Rand Paul will buckle,” said Brian Darling, a former top aide who is still in regular contact with the senator.

