The Kentucky senator’s defensive demeanor in response to tough questions has reporters wondering if Paul is truly prepared to run for president

Rand Paul is already pushing back – hard – over his controversial positions on foreign policy and reproductive rights, as he tries to toe the early line in establishing himself as both a Tea Party conservative and electable Republican candidate for the White House.



The Kentucky senator, who formally launched his presidential campaign on Tuesday, wasted no time in embarking on a weeklong tour that includes early voting states such as South Carolina and Iowa.



But in a pair of contentious interviews during his first stop in New Hampshire, Paul found himself on the defensive – on topics ranging from Iran and Israel to abortion and his confrontations with women – as political watchers raised questions about whether Paul would be too extreme for the world’s biggest campaign stage.



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During a Wednesday interview with NBC’s Today show, Paul turned combative when anchor Savannah Guthrie pointed out that his foreign policy positions had changed on the threat posed by Iran and foreign aid to Israel. Paul cut Guthrie off.



“Why don’t we let me explain instead of talking over me, OK?” Paul said. “Before we go through a litany of things you say I’ve changed on, why don’t you ask me a question: have I changed my opinion?”



As Guthrie reframed the question to ask if Paul still believed that Iran is not a nuclear threat, the senator accused her of “editorializing” his views.



“No, no, no, you’ve editorialized it. No, no, no, no, listen. You’ve editorialized,” he said. “Let me answer a question. You asked a question and you say ‘Have your views changed?’ instead of editorializing and saying my views have changed.”



The testy exchange was quickly seized upon as another example of Paul being condescending toward a female reporter, following a February interview on CNBC in which he “shushed” anchor Kelly Evans and told her to “calm down”. Paul was mocked on Twitter with the hashtag #Randsplaining – a play on the term “mansplaining”.

ComfortablySmug (@ComfortablySmug) #Randsplaining is a real phenomenon now. He just loses his mind when women ask him serious and important questions

Democrats have already sought to cast Paul as anti-women, given his position as a staunch pro-life Republican and support for fetal personhood bills in the Senate. The narrative was revived later on Wednesday, when Paul refused to outline – in an interview with the Associated Press – what exceptions should be allowed for abortion. Paul has backed bills that include exceptions for rape and incest, as well as bills that do not.



“Paul grew testy when pressed in the interview on the question of exceptions,” AP’s Philip Elliott wrote, quoting the candidate as saying: “I gave you about a five-minute answer. Put in my five-minute answer.”

Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) This is only the first day of interviews, let alone debates http://t.co/yU2vGFY1lI pic.twitter.com/NN5q8ayUVh

That answer, according to AP, did not include what specific abortion exceptions Paul supports, but rather the following response: “The thing is about abortion – and about a lot of things – is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you’re this or this or that, or you’re hard and fast (on) one thing or the other.”

Paul later pushed back on another abortion question, this time from NH1’s Paul Steinhauser, according to reporters on the ground. “Why don’t we ask the DNC if it’s okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” the senator said, according to a tweet from Bloomberg Politics reporter Dave Weigel.

More broadly, the interviews called into question Paul’s preparedness for the grueling nature of presidential campaigns and how he will react when faced with tough questions on a debate stage.

A New York Times editorial on Wednesday said Paul “will have to embrace some of the extreme Republican social positions” in early 2016 primary states. But Paul’s temperament, namely his tendency to turn defensive, has been called into question before – notably when he scolded the media amid allegations that he had plagiarized content from Wikipedia and other sources in his book and some speeches.

In the NBC interview, for example, Guthrie was pointing out areas of foreign policy where Paul has, according to his record, changed course. He proposed legislation in 2011 that would eliminate foreign aid entirely, including to Israel, which he argued at the time would only strengthen “one of America’s most important allies”.

In 2007, as a surrogate for his father Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, Paul said it was “ridiculous” to regard Iran as a national security threat. He also told a conservative audience in 2013 that diplomacy or containment should not be taken off the table in the US approach to Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

After initially sparring with NBC’s Guthrie, Paul acknowledged the reversal in his stance on Iran.

“2007 was a long time ago and events do change over long periods of time,” he said. “We’re talking about a time when I wasn’t running for office, when I was helping someone else run for office.”

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Paul defended his tone toward women reporters in an interview with CNN later on Wednesday, insisting that he was equally testy with male reporters, too.



“I think I’ve been universally short tempered and testy with both male and female reporters. I’ll own up to that,” Paul said. “And it’s hard sometimes. As you know, like during our interview right now, I’m looking only at a camera and it’s hard to have a true interaction sometimes, particularly if it’s a hostile interviewer and so I do think that interviews should be questions and not necessarily editorializing.”



Paul nonetheless conceded he will have to “get better at holding my tongue and holding my temper, but I think it’s pretty equal opportunity, not directed towards one male or female.”

As a politician who rode into the Senate on the Tea Party wave of 2010, Paul has since made a brand for himself as both a conservative darling and libertarian hero. In a nod to his following among grassroots conservatives, one of Paul’s first stops during a trip to swing state New Hampshire on Tuesday was at a Manchester bar that is a favorite among Tea Party activists.

But Paul’s not-so-delicate dance on foreign policy and abortion underscores the obstacles he faces in both seeking his party’s nomination for president and broadening his mainstream appeal.

Defense hawks within the GOP have long criticized Paul’s generally non-interventionist ideology, an issue that will pose challenges in a crowded primary where the threat posed by the Islamic State and Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran will serve as prime fodder for candidates.

Although Americans are split on abortion, they broadly support exceptions for rape and incest – an issue that haunted Republicans in 2012 when Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin led the party into controversy by seeking to define “legitimate” rape.

This story has been updated to include comments from Rand Paul’s interview with CNN.

