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Rand Paul Gets Into The Holiday Spirit With A Festivus Tweetstorm

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took to Twitter on Saturday to air his grievances in celebration of Festivus.
Timothy D. Easley
/
AP
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took to Twitter on Saturday to air his grievances in celebration of Festivus.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took to social media to poke fun at his political colleagues including an "airing of grievances" about government waste, President Trump, Fox News and Washington politics overall in a tweetstorm on Saturday.

In a nod to the classic Seinfeld episode, the onetime presidential candidate, wished his 1.86 million Twitter followers a "Happy Festivus" — a made-up holiday meant to shine a light on the hypercommercialization of Christmas and to confront those who have disappointed throughout the year. Festivus, for those who "celebrate" it, typically falls on Dec. 23.

Paul kicked off the day with a simple tweet:

"Good morning and #Happy Festivus! Later today I will help you celebrate with some #AiringofGrievances."

Trump, who is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, was the subject of a number of Paul's tweets including:

"I want to pause to wish @realDonaldTrump a Happy Festivus. We told him to take today off, since he airs his grievances on here every day. "

It got better from there.

Before he got rolling though, he issued a warning tweet at Fox News, seemingly to playfully ensure that the network didn't issue a bulletin saying he was attacking Christmas.

"Before we get started, I need to alert @FoxNews and someone in DC that this is NOT a war on Christmas. It's a war on everything else," another tweet said.

Paul also poked fun at fellow Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for his Twitter beef with Mark Hamill, the actor who played the iconic Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, tweeting, "There are how many millions Americans who've wanted to force-choke Ted, and he picked on the one who could do It. Brave, he is," Paul said in another tweet, followed by: "I'm KIDDING, Ted. You're likeable enough."

He also blasted former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Paul's grievance on this issue stems from the news this week that the Pentagon secretly spent more than $20 million on UFO research, a program Reid secured funding for, according to reports.

In all caps, Paul tweeted:

"HOW IS IT YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT THE ALIENS, HARRY??!!"

Paul goes on to tweet about Hillary Clinton's book What Happened, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and what Paul says was $563,421,523 in federal government waste among other things.

Then Paul pivoted back to the president about wanting funding for his wall along the southern border, tweeting: "And @realDonaldTrump thinks there is a chance in hell someone is going pay for that border wall."

Attached to that tweet was a gif from the 1994 movie Dumb and Dumber that read: "So you're telling me there's a chance."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Brakkton Booker is a National Desk reporter based in Washington, DC.