Paul said his 'enemies' were 'making a mountain out of a molehill.' Paul: Plagiarism charge from 'haters'

Sen. Rand Paul responded to accusations that he plagiarized parts of his speeches this year from Wikipedia, but Rachel Maddow, who’s been leading the charge on the claims against him, said his answer showed “absolute incoherence.”

Earlier this week, Maddow had played clips of two of Paul’s speeches this year where he appeared to repeat nearly verbatim parts of the Wikipedia entries on the movies “ Gattaca” and “ Stand and Deliver.”


On Wednesday, Paul was asked about the charges during an interview on Fusion with Jorge Ramos. Paul said he gave proper credit and his “enemies” were “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“Well, we, we borrowed the plot lines from ‘Gattaca,’ a movie, and I gave credit to the people who wrote the movie,” Paul said. “I think they’re arguing about whether things are properly footnoted. And there are technicalities to this. But nothing I said was not given attribution to where it came from. … The rest of it is making a mountain out of a molehill from people I think basically who are political enemies and have an ax to grind.”

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Paul said were he presenting an academic paper, attributions would have been footnoted differently, but when asked about whether he had a pattern of doing this, he repeated that he gave the movie writers credit.

“I didn’t claim that I created the movie ‘Gattaca.’ See, that’s what’s absurd about this. The plot line from ‘Gattaca’ belongs to one person, the guy, the screenwriter, and I gave him credit for that,” Paul said.

Paul said “a lot of people” work on his speeches so he can’t pinpoint one person responsible for the writing, and he dismissed the attacks as coming from “haters.”

“This is really about information and attacks coming from haters. You know, the person who is leading this attack, she’s been spreading hate on me for about three years now and I don’t intend for it to go away, but I also don’t see her as an objective news source,” Paul said.

Paul’s office released a similar statement from the Senator on Thursday.

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On her MSNBC show later Wednesday, Maddow played Paul’s response in full and criticized him for not understanding the meaning of plagiarism.

“This is not a personal thing for me at all. I feel no emotion about this, and I do not hate you nor have I ever tried to spread hate on you, and I am sorry you feel that way,” Maddow said. “But also you didn’t borrow plot lines from these movies; you read the Wikipedia page out loud. The point is that you seem to have a frequent habit of plagiarizing part of your speeches. And perhaps that is explained by the fact that you do not understand what plagiarism means.”

Maddow said Paul missed the point.

“Nobody is accusing you of pretending that you wrote ‘Gattaca’ or that you wrote ‘Stand and Deliver,’ that is not what this about. This is not about you explaining a plot line. This is about you lifting other peoples’ words verbatim and pretending that they are your own,” Maddow said. “This is something that high school students know not to do. And you are presenting yourself as potential candidate for president.”

Thanking Ramos for asking Paul about the issue, as his office had not responded to repeated media requests for comment, Maddow said the issue was not quite over.

“Given his absolute incoherence in his explanation, I have a feeling this may not be the end of it,” Maddow said.