Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was “uninvited” to an annual White House picnic typically attended by members of Congress and their families, framing the move to reporters Wednesday as retribution for his opposition to key components of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“They’re afraid of what I’m saying, so they think they’re going to punish me, I can’t go to the picnic, as if somehow that’s going to make me more conciliatory,” Paul said. “So it’s silly, in a way, but it’s also just really sad that this is what it’s come to. But petty vindictiveness like this, it makes you — it makes you wonder about the quality of people you’re dealing with.”
Paul, who said he attended picnics hosted by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, told reporters he called the White House on Wednesday to secure tickets to the annual picnic but was told he was not invited. He said he had family members flying to Washington to attend the event, including his son, daughter-in-law and 6-month-old grandson, who he noted owns a “Make America Great Again” hat.
“I just find this incredibly petty,” Paul told reporters. “I have been, I think, nothing but polite to the president. I have been an intellectual opponent, a public policy opponent, and he’s chosen now to uninvite me from the picnic and to say my grandson can’t come to the picnic.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a series of questions, including whether Paul was ever invited to the event and whether Trump was directly involved in the decision to “uninvite” him.
As Trump pushes Republicans to pass a package of measures to fund much of his domestic agenda by Independence Day, Paul is among the Senate Republicans poised to make that milestone unreachable, joining fiscal hawks in the party to balk at legislation the Congressional Budget Office estimates said would add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit.
In addition to his belief that the funding package would “explode the debt,” Paul has criticized spending cuts in the bill as “wimpy and anemic,” called planned Medicaid changes in the legislation “bad strategy” and proposed cutting billions of dollars for Trump’s border wall from the bill.
“In private, there’s quite a few people in there who actually do think we could save some money and are open-minded to it and believe the administration should justify the numbers,” Paul told reporters after a two-hour meeting on the bill Wednesday. “Even if you’re supportive, and I am supportive of border security, but I’m just not supportive of a blank check.”
Paul said this week he plans to vote no on the legislation and speculated Wednesday that that might be among the reasons the invitation was rescinded.
“I’m arguing from a true belief and worry that our country is mired in debt and getting worse, and they choose to react by uninviting my grandson to the picnic,” Paul said. “I don’t know, I just think it really makes me lose a lot of respect I once had for Donald Trump.”
Trump has frequently lashed out at Paul in response to the sustained opposition, deriding him on Truth Social for his criticisms.
“Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming. He loves voting ‘NO’ on everything, he thinks it’s good politics, but it’s not,” Trump wrote last week.
Paul has emerged as a chief critic of Trump’s fiscal policy, and he has intensely criticized his decision to impose tariffs on major U.S. trading partners, arguing they will push the country into a recession.
Paul, a libertarian conservative, was one of four Republican senators to back a Democratic resolution to block the implementation of Trump’s Canadian tariffs, predicting at the time that the import penalties would “threaten us with a recession” and calling Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on major U.S. trading partners “a terrible, terrible idea.” The effort has so far stalled in the House.
Paul also joined Democrats in introducing a bipartisan resolution to undo the “reciprocal” tariffs Trump imposed on dozens of countries, this time by terminating the national emergency he declared to implement the global penalties, arguing that Trump had exceeded his presidential authority.
“Tariffs are taxes, and the power to tax belongs to Congress—not the president. Our Founders were clear: tax policy should never rest in the hands of one person,” Paul said in a statement about the bipartisan effort. “Abusing emergency powers to impose blanket tariffs not only drives up costs for American families but also tramples on the Constitution. It’s time Congress reasserts its authority and restores the balance of power.”
That effort failed to pass the Senate.
Paul’s differences with Trump even extend to the military parade taking place Saturday, which he likened to parades in countries led by dictators.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Paul said Tuesday. “The images you saw in the Soviet Union and North Korea, we were proud not to be that.”
But still, in the face of his criticisms of Trump, Paul appeared to view the rescinded invitation as a shock, noting that even Democratic lawmakers remain invited to the White House picnic.
“I think I’m the first senator in the history of United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Rand told reporters. “Literally, every Democrat is invited, every Republican is invited, and to say that my family is no longer welcome, kind of sad, actually.”
