Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is weighing a possible presidential run in 2028, telling reporters that he is “thinking about it.”
Speaking to “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Paul said, “Yeah, I don’t know yet, so maybe they know something I don’t know. We’re thinking about it, and I would say 50-50. We’ll make a decision after the [2026 midterm] election.”
He added, “But I’m not going to do it just to do it. It would be, one, because we need to have a free market wing. We need to have a free trade wing in the party. And we need to have a wing of the party who’s not eager for war and tries to at least explore diplomacy as an option to war.”
Similar comments were made earlier this month during an interview on “Sunday Night with Chuck Todd.”
“We’ll decide after 2026,” Paul said, explaining, “The most important thing to me isn’t necessarily me or what my role is, but that there is someone who’s advocating that international trade is good and makes us rich. That big is not bad.”
When asked about a presidential run in September by Spectrum News, Paul stated that he believes the Republican Party “needs to have a voice that’s for trade. I think international trade makes us rich as a country and rich as a people, and we’re losing those voices in the Republican Party.”
“So, we’ll see over time what happens,” he added. “No final decision will be made for quite some time, but I still want to be a voice in the debate over the direction of the country and the direction of the Republican Party.”
In December, Paul declared that he would not support Vice President JD Vance for a 2028 presidential run. Speaking to Jon Karl of ABC’s “This Week,” Paul said, “I think there needs to be representatives in the Republican Party who still believe international trade is good, who still believe in free market capitalism, who still believe in low taxes. See, it used to separate conservatives and liberals that conservatives thought it was a spending problem, we didn’t want less revenue, we wanted less spending.”
“But now all these pro-tariff protectionists, they love taxes. And so they tax, tax, tax, and then they brag about all the revenue coming in. That has never been a conservative position,” he added. “So I’m going to continue to try to lead a conservative free market wing in the party, and we’ll see where things lead over time.”
