Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul relayed some advice for non-mask wearers who get confronted in public by hysterical, hypochondriac Karens during a Tuesday night segment of Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime."
Host Jesse Watters introduced the segment with a montage of mask nazis harassing normal Americans guilty of wanting to breathe freely.
"These people clearly aren't well," Watters said before bringing on the Kentucky senator. "Large swaths of America are in a Covid cult."
Asked by the Fox News host how to handle such intrusions "in a respectful but normal way," Paul jokingly responded: "See, I would say bear spray but I'm afraid that will get me in trouble so I won't say that."
"I think you should back away and say, 'Lady, you are crazy, leave me the hell alone,' but you should not confront her," said the Kentucky senator. "You should not use violence. Back away and just say look, can you not find some other lunatic friends to hang around with?"
Great conversation between @JesseBWatters and Sen. Rand Paul on mask mania:
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) January 26, 2022
"So really there's no strong evidence that masks work ... If anything the disease keeps going up when you have mask mandates. The masks really have had no influence on the pandemic." pic.twitter.com/m4fpwydbiW
"Really this is a difference between individualism and collectivism," Paul added. "I have an opinion, but I'm not wanting to enforce it on anybody. I'm not telling you that you can't wear a mask. I'm just saying don't make me wear a mask when it doesn't work. They don't understand that, that we have a perspective, they have a perspective. But they want to force and ram their perspective down our throat through force. I mean, what kind of people are they? This has brought out the worst in people."
The libertarian-leaning senator, a frequent critic of Dr. Anthony Fauci and useless Covid measures, also pointed to evidence from Florida, Sweden, and elsewhere that mask mandates "have had no influence on the pandemic" before poking fun at CNN medical analyst Leana Wen, who recently called cloth masks "little more than facial decorations" against OMICRON, the dominant variant.