Video of an interview surfaced on Tuesday in which Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told the conspiracy theory website InfoWars.com in 2009 that mandatory vaccinations could lead to “martial law” in America.

“The first sort of thing you see with martial law is mandates, and they’re talking about making it mandatory,” Paul said of vaccinations on InfoWars’ channel “Prison Planet TV.”

The senator said some vaccines are worth taking, and threw in a good word for the polio and smallpox vaccines. But he wanted parents to be able to pick and choose, to prevent big government from achieving too much power.

“Am I going to take the swine flu vaccine? Unlikely, until I’m certain that it’s safe, and I’m not going to have my kids take it till I know it’s safe,” he told Infowars.

InfoWars is run by Alex Jones, perhaps best known for his adrenaline-fueled “debate” with then-CNN host Piers Morgan over gun rights in 2013. Jones is a prolific broadcaster with a conspiracy-minded worldview.

It wasn’t the only time Sen. Paul had spoken to Jones’s site about creeping totalitarianism: In 2010, Paul spoke to another InfoWars reporter about the dangers of “world government” and the Bilderberg conference, a frequent fixation of small-government conspiracy-mongers.

Asked what he knew about Bilderberg, Paul said, “only what I’ve learned from Alex Jones.”

Watch the video, courtesy of InfoWars:

h/t Free Beacon