Rachel Maddow Basically Tells Rand Paul to Fucking Grow Up Already

Last night on her show, Rachel Maddow addressed Rand Paul’s comments from over the weekend when the Senator, while talking to George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, expressed a desire to duel Maddow over her recent claims that Paul plagiarized large parts of his books and speeches from Wikipedia and other sources. (The accusations, by the way, are undeniably true.)

“If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge,” Paul said. “But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.”

Now Maddow has responded to the Kentucky Republican’s wimpy half-threat and, no, her reply wasn’t “Pistols at dawn.” Instead, she did what real adults do: She told Paul to grow up already and face the charges.

“Senator Rand Paul wants to shoot at me or stab me with a sword or something for reporting something true that he has done wrong as a politician,” Maddow told her audience. “Responding to the person rather than the charge is a time-tested tactic. Honestly, it’s a symptom of immaturity in our political discourse.”

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Worth noting: Senator Paul was charged again with plagiarism Monday night, this time for an op-ed that he wrote for the Washington Times in which he appears to have lifted lines directly from the Dan Stewart article “Rethinking Mandatory Sentencing.”