A collection of racist, anti-Israel and anti-gay statements that appeared in newsletters published in Ron Paul’s name may have made national headlines, but the congressman said Thursday that he doesn’t think the controversy has damaged his campaign. “It never hurt me politically, and right now I think it is the same case, but people are desperate to find something,” the GOP presidential contender said during an in-studio interview at WHO Radio in Des Moines.
The newsletters in questions were published in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s under various titles, including The Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Freedom Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report and The Ron Paul Investment Letter.
Since the 1990s, Paul has been questioned about some of the articles that appeared in those mailings. He said Thursday that the incendiary statements amounted to “probably ten sentences out of 10,000 pages for all I know.”
“It wasn’t a reflection of my views at all…I think it was terrible,” Paul said. “It was tragic, and I had some responsibility for it, because the name went out in my letter. But I was not an editor. I (was) like a publisher.”
He later added: “People who know me best — people in my (Texas congressional) district —- have heard these stories for years and years. And they know they weren’t a reflection of anything I believed in.”
The newsletters came back into the public’s eye earlier this month via an article in The Weekly Standard and a CNN piece in which Paul said he “disavowed” the statements, then terminated the interview.
During Thursday’s chat on WHO Radio, Paul said he wrote the economic pieces included in the newsletters, but did not elaborate on the identities of the publications’ other authors.
“There would be many times when I did not edit the whole letter and other things got put in,” he said. “And then I didn’t even become aware of the details of that until many years later when somebody else called and said: ‘Did you know what was in it?’”
