Rand Paul in Meet the Press interviews during 2015

On Homeland Security: Focus NSA surveillance on threats, not innocent Americans

PAUL: No, I would actually keep the NSA. In fact, I would have the NSA target their activities, more and more, towards our enemies. I think if you're not spending so much time and money collecting the information of innocent Americans, maybe we could've spent more time knowing that one of the Tsarnaev boys, one of the Boston bombers, had gone back to Chechnya. We didn't know that, even though we'd been tipped off by the Russians. We had communicated, we had interviewed him, and still didn't know that. Same with the recent jihadist from Phoenix that traveled to Texas, and the shooting in Garland; we knew him. We had investigated him and put him in jail. I want to spend more time on people we have suspicion of, and we have probable cause of, and less time on innocent Americans. It distracts us from the job of getting terrorists.

On War & Peace: Fight Iran with diplomacy and military strength, not war

There has to be the threat of military force. But my hope is really that negotiations continue. There are some in my party who say, "Oh, I don't want any negotiations." They're ready to be done with it. But once you're done with negotiations, the choices are war, or they get a weapon, and I don't want to have just those two binary choices.

On Foreign Policy: Boycott countries that demonize women, like Saudi Arabia

A: I think the thing about the Clintons is that there's this grand hypocrisy in the sense that we've got this war on women thing that they like to talk about. And yet Hillary Clinton has taken money from countries that rape victims are publicly lashed. In Saudi Arabia, a woman was gang raped by seven men. She was publicly lashed 90 times. And then she was convicted of being in the car with an unmarried man. We should be voluntarily boycotting a country, not buying stuff from a country that does that to women.

Q: What would you say to Hillary on that?

A: I would expect Clinton--if she believes in women's rights--she should be calling for a boycott of Saudi Arabia. Instead, she's accepting tens of millions of dollars. And I think it looks unseemly. And there's going to be some explaining she's going to have to come up with.

On War & Peace: I brought fighting ISIS to the forefront of discussion

Well, that's all they'll let me attach it to. But I forced them to debate. And I think that's one of the things to me that has been most exciting about being in the Senate, is I could be at home saying, "Congress should declare war," and, "Why won't Congress get involved?"

But now, I'm actually there. And I can say, "You know what? I'll make them vote on this. And they will have to discuss war." And they did. We had a great discussion. It didn't come to a resolution, but I'm still pushing to say, "Look, you should not be at war." And in fact, I've said the president, if he wanted to be a great leader last August should have come before a joint session of Congress and laid out the plan.