AP Photo 2016 Rand Paul's livestream: Metallica and the Middle East A camera followed the Kentucky senator for a day in Iowa. It picked up corny jokes, his musical tastes and his views on foreign policy.

Rand Paul promised an inside look into his presidential bid through a livestream of his day on the Iowa campaign trail Tuesday. But if you were looking for dramatic moments, the video feed wasn’t for you. The Kentucky senator managed to crack a few corny jokes and provide a window into his musical tastes — Metallica and KT Tunstall, go figure — but otherwise the livestream was something less than must-see TV.

The day was what you might expect: a candidate driving around a flat state; talking points in one-on-one interviews with reporters; roughly the same stump speech delivered to audience after audience.


The livestream didn’t capture Paul's every movement throughout the day. There were at least 20 breaks in the feed from the Paul campaign's website, some lasting just a few minutes and some going for 20 or 30 minutes. The campaign explained that some of those cuts were just so the Kentucky senator could use the bathroom or take a short break to get reoriented.

Instead, what viewers got was a window into what Iowans would see if they followed Paul around on his tour of a few of the state's college campuses and other campaign stops. Paul, throughout the day, made a habit of knocking the leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

"If we had either Hillary or Bernie we'd have a stifling of the economy," Paul said while in the car with campaign aides. "People need to realize Bernie would be an absolute and utter disaster for this country."

Paul, throughout his tour, also tied his Clinton attacks to where he disagrees with his own party on foreign policy, especially on Syria.

"Tonight you'll have the Democrat debate. What does Hillary Clinton believe? She's for a no-fly zone over there," Paul said during a stop at Upper Iowa University. "So are most of the Republicans. What do you think that ends up meaning? Iraq and Syria have invited Russia to fly over their countries. I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea but I do know that if you say tomorrow that they're not allowed to fly over countries that have invited them to fly over there, that means you shoot them down. So no-fly zone is a recipe for disaster; it's a recipe for another war over there. But you've got both sides wanting this."

Iowa chief strategist Steve Grubbs and Paul's top adviser, Doug Stafford, passed questions on to him from social media while driving around the state. It wasn't too different than a town hall event. There too, he pushed his message that he would be a different kind of Republican. One question was "as president of the United States, what will you do with the myriad of executive orders President Obama has been signing in his presidency?"

"I don't think we've ever had a Republican president who really set out to undo the vast overreach of the executive branch. We've elected Republicans and we thought it was going to be better," Paul answered. "And then the Republican didn't turn out to undo anything the Democrats have done and in fact sometimes the Republicans, like the first George Bush, added wetlands regulation that made it harder for farmers and ended up getting some private landowners put in jail for breaking regulations. So as president I've told people my goal is not to accumulate power but to actually devolve power, give power back to the states and the people, and I would undo, virtually all, on Day One, President Obama's executive orders."

At another point on the trip Paul threw out a zinger tied to Sanders and Clinton.

"I guess they see the same hairstylist," Paul joked.

There were a few moments during the day when politics took a back seat and viewers got a glimpse into Paul's personal tastes. Asked in the car what his first day in the Oval Office would look like, Paul joked "well, we'd have to have a new audio system in there because I'd want to play my music really loud throughout the White House." The livestream also picked up Lyle Lovett and Metallica on the playlist as Paul's car drove around the state.

At a stop in Dubuque County — the baseball field where "Field of Dreams" was filmed — Paul took sides on a hotly debated issue that was far from the political realm.

"Should Shoeless Joe Jackson be in the Hall of Fame? Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame? I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say yes because they were great baseball players. Maybe not so great of people, but I think you should get in the Hall of Fame for the talent you had on the field. Not the moral lapses you had off the field," Paul said while sitting on bleachers facing the field.

The campaign's strategy for reversing its sinking poll numbers and fundraising relies in part on rallying support of young voters in Iowa — Paul, Grubbs and Stafford repeatedly pointed out that the campaign's three-day visit through Iowa is heavy on college campus visits. Paul himself said that the "RandLive" feed was part of that.

"I wish I knew I was livestreaming. I've been saying I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this, and all the sudden I'm doing this," Paul said sarcastically at one point during the day. "No, we want to get our message out to people who may not watch the evening news anymore. A lot of young people, my kids have probably never watched cable news even at a house where we have it on all the time. They get their news on their cellphones and off the Internet. Comedy sites, passed around from friends on social media. And I think you get into a different venue by livestreaming it — you get to some new people."