Flashback: Rand Paul Accused of Tying up, Blindfolding and Abducting a Female College Student in Aqua Buddha Bong ‘Prank’

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to slander former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by suggesting she was somehow complicit in the affair her husband had with Monica Lewinsky nearly 20 years ago. When “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked Paul if he was in fact blaming Hillary Clinton for Bill’s affair, Paul said he wasn’t — but then immediately contradicted himself, adding, “Sometimes it’s hard to separate one from the other.”

It is beneath contempt — and yet typical of the low esteem with which Republicans view women — to blame a wife for her husband’s infidelity. Compounding his contemptible behavior, of course, is the fact that Paul’s slander is based on half-truths and outright lies, nearly all of which went unchallenged on “Meet the Press,” as usual.

For example, on “Meet the Press,” Paul said that Pres. Clinton “took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office.” In fact, Lewinsky was 22 years old, well past the age of consent. Paul also said, “This isn’t having an affair. I mean, this isn’t me saying, ‘Oh, he’s had an affair, we shouldn’t talk to him.’ Someone who takes advantage of a young girl in their office? I mean, really. And then they have the gall to stand up and say, ‘Republicans are having a war on women’?”

Clinton and Lewinsky were precisely “having an affair.” We know this thanks to the most expensive investigation ever conducted by the government. The affair may have been tawdry and inappropriate but it was consensual. Lewinsky herself told investigators that she actively pursued a sexual relationship with Clinton. The age difference was upsetting, especially to pundits and politicians who had college-age daughters, but it was not predatory on Clinton’s part and, like it or not, it was perfectly legal.

On the other hand, kidnapping is illegal. And it would seem Republicans could have found someone better to pursue this line of attack against Hillary Clinton than Rand Paul, who has never denied accusations that he abducted a female student as part of a college “prank” when he was enrolled at Baylor University, a right-wing Christian school in Texas:

The strangest episode of Paul’s time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul’s teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, “He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They’d been smoking pot.” After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. “They told me their god was ‘Aqua Buddha’ and that I needed to bow down and worship him,” the woman recalls. “They blindfolded me and made me bow down to ‘Aqua Buddha’ in the creek. I had to say, ‘I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.’ At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no.”

The victim later told the Washington Post that it was not a classic kidnapping incident because she knew the men who tied her up, blindfolded her and took her away in a car to parts unknown:

The woman said that much of the subsequent coverage of her allegations missed a key nuance: As a participant in a college ritual, where lines between acquiescence and victimization are often blurry, she was largely playing along with the notion that she was being forced to follow Paul’s orders.

“I went along because they were my friends,” she said. “There was an implicit degree of cooperation in the whole thing. I felt like I was being hazed.”

But:

[She] added that the whole thing was so “weird” that afterwards she ended relations with Paul and his friends.

Factcheck.org notes that Rand Paul has never denied the accusation that he tied up and blindfolded this college girl and drove away with her in a car.