Maddow: Rand Paul needs to explain Wikipedia plagiarism if he wants to run for president

On Tuesday night's edition of "The Rachel Maddow Show," host Rachel Maddow discussed the growing plagiarism scandal around Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who appears to have serially plagiarized Wikipedia entries in his speeches. Paul's office has refused to speak to the Maddow Show about the accusations, but the questions, Maddow said, aren't going to go away.

Maddow pointed out on Monday that a in support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli was actually a verbatim recitation of the Wikipedia entry about the Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman film "Gattica."

Then on Tuesday afternoon, BuzzFeed editor Andrew Kaczynski pointed out that this is a recurring problem for Paul. In a speech to a group of Hispanic business leaders, he gave a note-for-note recitation of the Wikipedia entry for the movie "Stand and Deliver," which tells the story of an inner city math teacher.

"When you are running for president, a plagiarism scandal is not what you want on your resume, especially not something as embarrassing as plagiarizing Wikipedia, but that is what Rand Paul has on his hands now," Maddow said.

"And in the face of mounting evidence that this wasn't an isolated incident, that this is a repeat thing," she continued, "Sen. Paul is not talking. We reached out to his office again today, no response at all."

Maddow pointed out that it's not just her show now asking questions about this. On Tuesday night, the Louisville Courier-Journal ran a headline story called "Rand Paul mum after being accused of plagiarism."

"Rand Paul may not want to answer to me or this show or this network about this," Maddow said, "but he's going to have to answer for this to his home town press or to somebody. He may not want to answer for it, but he's going to have to."

Watch the video, embedded below via MSNBC: