Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has a dire warning for Donald Trump supporters, telling CNN's "New Day" on Friday that the GOP front-runner is "not a real conservative" but has managed to tap into people's anger over how the country is being run.
"I think Donald Trump has tapped into anger with Washington," Paul told CNN, reports The Washington Times. "In fact, that's why I ran for office - 'cause I was angry with Washington, and in fact I was angry with fake conservatives who promise[d] to be conservative and who weren't."
"I think Donald Trump is one of those fake conservatives," said Paul, arguably the most conservative candidate in the race, using Trump's position on eminent domain as an example.
Paul, an ophthalmologist, told Fox News' Sean Hannity Thursday night that Trump has an "authoritarian concept" of how government should operate and once tried to use eminent domain laws to take a woman's house so he could build a parking lot for one of his casinos.
"Americans need to wake up and listen. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He's a fake conservative, and eventually I think people are going to wake up and hear that," Paul said, adding that he would "absolutely" like to debate Trump on Hannity's show.
In a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday, Trump took his most commanding lead yet over the rest of the GOP pack, garnering 28 percent, compared to Ben Carson in second place with 12 percent and Paul in eighth place with 2 percent.
Speaking to CNN on Friday, Paul said of the poll results: "I think as more conservatives find out that Donald Trump is a fake conservative, I think those numbers will shift, but we're very early and most of the polls that are being cited, when you ask people, 'Are you decided?' two-thirds of the people in all of these polls that are being quoted are really undecided on who they're going to vote for yet."
Paul said he has been seeing 500 to 1,000 people turn out for his events in the western part of the country. "Our crowds have been bigger than they've ever been, so if I weren't reading any of this or seeing these polls, I would think we're doing better than we ever have," he said. "So all I can do is continue to talk about the fact that we should get rid of the tax code, that we should have a flat tax, one single rate for everybody, 14 and a half percent for everybody, that I think government should be smaller, we need more personal freedom, we need to get rid of the government collecting all of our phone records, and that's my message."
"It is my message. I hope it resonates, and we'll find out over time," he said.
If he does win the presidency, Paul told CNN he plans to continue performing eye surgery.
"I jokingly said we're going to turn the Lincoln bedroom into a surgery suite," he said. "You think politics could be frustrating sometimes, you're absolutely right. But in medicine the amazing thing is we all unify around a goal, someone is blind, we remove the cataract and they can see again. There's probably nothing more rewarding than seeing that smile."
