Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). Reuters/Kevin Lamarque Presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) doesn't think his GOP rival Donald Trump's rise in the polls is permanent.

In a CNN interview Thursday, Paul dismissed the real-estate magnate's rise as a brief "loss of sanity."

"I think this is a temporary sort of loss of sanity. But we're going to come back our senses and look for somebody serious to lead the country at some point," he said.

The senator cited Trump's proposal to demand Mexico pay for a wall along the US-Mexico border as an example of how the businessman is running a less-than-serious campaign.

"They're hungry for someone who will tell the truth, who will say Washington is broken and that we really have to start over ... wash out the place," Paul said of Trump's supporters. "But the thing is, we also have to have a serious discussion of how we're going to do it."

Since Trump launched his campaign last month, he has been at the center of a media firestorm. Among other things, he ignited national controversies by blasting the Mexican government and his fellow GOP critics in off-color terms.

Paul told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer that the media attention is what fueled Trump's rise to the No. 1 position in most of the Republican primary surveys.

"Television works, Wolf," he said when asked about Trump's rise. "If you would give some other candidates time from eight in the morning 'til eight at night — all day long, every day for three weeks — I'm guessing some other candidates might rise as well."

Paul pointed to his tax plan that he recently promoted by lighting the current US tax code on fire and shredding it with a chainsaw.

"While some people are hearing about one candidate all the time, very few people know that I've offered a tax code [where] you can fill out your tax return on one page," he said. "So if I had a billion-dollars worth of advertising and every network going gaga over that, you know what, I think we could get ours to rise also. But there's going to be time for that."