Rand Paul appears in the surviving excerpts of The Bob Zadek Show in two distinct capacities: as a recorded or reported voice cited by Bob Zadek and by guests, and, in one 2023 episode, as the interview subject himself. The excerpts do not supply biographical detail, electoral history, or a continuous account of his positions; they show him invoked at particular moments to make particular arguments.
The EPA coal regulations (2014)
In a June 2014 episode, Bob Zadek devoted a segment to Environmental Protection Agency regulations promulgated under the Clean Air Act, which he described as having been called the “war on coal.” Zadek argued that whatever the United States did would have a de minimis effect on the planet, that eliminating all coal-burning plants would affect climate over a 20 or 30-year period by less than one-tenth of one degree, and that the EPA plan would fall hardest on the poor. He then played a clip of opposition to the plan Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014).
The clip, introduced by Zadek as Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Rand Paul, has Manchin reporting that coal state lawmakers said President Obama had overstepped his authority by imposing strict new emission limits on power plants, and that Senator Rand Paul said the Obama administration was caving to extremists. In the portion of the clip attributed to Paul, he says it shows a lack of balance and that environmental extremists are guiding the administration’s policy, comparing it to the Keystone Pipeline, which he says could create tens of thousands of jobs but is blocked because some far-out-left environmentalists oppose it Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014).
Zadek’s own framing of the segment — the Clean Air Act as legislation by which Congress ceded enormous power to the executive, the insignificance of unilateral American action, the regressive incidence of the cost — is Zadek’s, not Paul’s. Paul’s recorded contribution is confined to the balance-and-extremists formulation and the Keystone comparison.
The Civil Rights Act and the Garland nomination (2016)
A May 2016 episode with Ilya Shapiro included a caller segment in which a caller identified as Raymond from San Francisco raised the treatment of judicial nominees. In the course of that exchange, Bob Zadek interjected that the act — the one the caller had been discussing — was the act Rand Paul had reservations about in the early stages of his failed run for the presidency, and that Paul was criticized for taking issue with the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s Ilya Shapiro on the Supreme Court in the Balance (2016).
The attribution matters: the statement about Paul’s reservations and the criticism he drew is Zadek’s, offered as an aside to the caller. The caller’s own remarks concerned Merrick Garland, the absence of hearings before 1916 and after 1962, and the conduct of Senate Republicans; he did not himself discuss Paul. The excerpt does not state what Paul’s specific objection to the Act was, nor how he characterized it.
The liberty wing and war powers (2017)
In a September 2017 episode with Austin Petersen, then a Senate candidate, Bob Zadek developed an argument about Senate arithmetic. With Republicans holding the thinnest of voting majorities, he said, smaller wings of the party — naming Rand Paul and Mike Lee, and prospectively Petersen — would have disproportionately large control and a seat at the table over legislation, because without the liberty wing supporting what Republicans wanted to do, their efforts would fail. Zadek likened this to a parliamentary system in which minority thinkers hold large power Federalism and the Flat Tax: The Austin Petersen Plan (2017).
Petersen, discussing foreign policy, said he supported Senator Rand Paul’s sunsetting provisions of the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that his opponent Claire McCaskill voted against that. He repeated the point later, saying he supported Rand Paul’s bill, which would have sunsetted the authorizations for the use of military force in the Middle East Federalism and the Flat Tax: The Austin Petersen Plan (2017).
Zadek then pressed Petersen on a point of attribution. He noted that the criticism went beyond the Democrats: Republicans, to their great shame, did not support Senator Paul, and Paul had given a well-reasoned and impassioned and 100% accurate presentation as to why the temporary use of military force in 2001 should be repealed, since it no longer ought to give the President political cover to fight what Zadek described as 11 or 12 undeclared wars. Zadek said he suspected Petersen would have joined Senator Paul, and asked whether the blame lay with many Republicans as well. Petersen agreed, saying the Republicans should have stood with Rand Paul and that he would have done so had he been the Senator from Missouri at that time Federalism and the Flat Tax: The Austin Petersen Plan (2017).
The COVID-19 book (2023)
A November 2023 episode is built around Bob Zadek’s interview with Senator Rand Paul about his book Deception: The Great COVID Coverup. The surviving excerpt is brief. In it, Paul says it was the outright lies that got him intrigued, and that the book exposes a coverup extending to eight different agencies in government and hundreds of people. He anticipates the objection that a conspiracy involving hundreds of people could not be true, and offers as the best explanation the way George Carlin put it — that a conspiracy theory is not necessarily where interests converge — adding that the idea that they could share guilt or culpability for millions of deaths is a big incentive for them to cover up Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
The excerpt’s own summary line describes the episode as concerning an alleged conspiracy by government officials to hide the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the funding of gain of function research in Wuhan, and a coordinated effort to suppress the lab-leak theory to protect the business of science. Beyond Paul’s Carlin remark and the eight-agencies and hundreds-of-people figures, the excerpt does not carry his argument in his own words.
Across episodes
The four episodes do not develop a single question about Paul. In 2014 he is a recorded voice against EPA coal rules; in 2016 he is an aside in a caller segment about judicial nominations; in 2017 he is both a structural fact of Senate arithmetic and the author of war-powers sunset provisions; in 2023 he is the guest. The only thread the excerpts sustain is Zadek’s own recurring interest in executive power — EPA rulemaking, war authority, and pandemic-era agencies — with Paul appearing at each point as an opponent or critic of that power. The excerpts show no change in how Paul is treated between the earlier and later episodes, and no episode in the set responds to another’s treatment of him.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Paul’s state, his committee assignments, the dates of his Senate service, or the content of the Civil Rights Act reservations attributed to him. They do not report what became of the war-powers sunset provisions, whether they received a vote, or what any court held about the underlying authorizations. The 2023 excerpt breaks off after Paul’s opening remarks, so the substance of the book’s claims and any response from Zadek are absent. Nothing in the sources establishes Paul’s own account of his presidential run beyond Zadek’s characterization of it as failed.
Episodes
1 appearance, 2023–2023.
- Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023) — Rand Paul on the COVID-19 origin coverup. US Senator