CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) – Even while fighting blindness in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere this week, Republican presidential contender Rand Paul intensified political attacks against rivals in both parties, vowing to continue pressing billionaire businessman Donald Trump in particular as the Kentucky senator embraces the role as the GOP’s leading pit bull.
An ophthalmologist by training, Paul left Haiti on Wednesday afternoon after spending four days here on a humanitarian mission. From a small urban clinic guarded by a team of armed police, Paul joined six eye surgeons who restored vision to dozens of impoverished Haitians, many living for years in blindness because of ailments such as cataracts that are easily treated in the United States.
The trip offered the tea party firebrand a brief respite from a presidential campaign in which his standing has slipped substantially in recent weeks. Yet the 2016 election – especially Trump – was a regular topic of conversation when Paul wasn’t in the operating room.
“His candidacy is an insult to the intellectual movement that has called for small government for decades,” said Paul, wearing operating room scrubs, in an interview with The Associated Press shortly before returning to surgery Tuesday morning. He described the reality TV star’s candidacy as “buffoonery” and promised to continue leading the anti-Trump charge “until he fades away.”
This week’s Haiti trip was organized by the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center, an institution that organizes regular missions to combat “curable blindness” in developing nations around the world. Paul participated in a similar mission with the same group last summer in Guatemala.