'Might lead to violence': Republican senator goes to war against Trump's plot win midterms

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) openly condemned President Donald Trump’s push for GOP-controlled states to redraw their congressional districts Sunday – laying equal blame on Democratic Party leaders’ retaliatory efforts like in California – and warned that continued gerrymandering could ultimately “lead to violence.”

Trump launched what some have referred to as the “redistricting wars” in June when he encouraged Texas state lawmakers to approve new congressional maps, and in a manner that the Trump administration hoped would give the GOP five additional House seats. That push sparked a wave of mid-decade redistricting efforts in both GOP and Dem-controlled states, and one that Paul warned could produce deadly results.

“On the negative aspect of both parties doing this, I think that it’s going to lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our country,” Paul said during an appearance Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet The Press.”

“Think about it: if 35% of Texas is solidly Democrat, and they have zero representation, or like in my state – we’re a very Republican state but we have one Democrat area in Louisville and we have a Democrat congressman. We can carve up Louisville and get rid of that one congressman, but how does that make Democrats feel? I think it makes them feel like they’re not represented.”

Paul reiterated that he blamed both Republican and Democrat-led efforts to gerrymander states, but warned nonetheless that political violence may become, in some Americans’ eyes, the only recourse for an electoral process that appears not to be “working any more.”

“When it becomes so extreme – like if California has no Republican representatives after this is done, or has one left – I think that makes people so dissatisfied they think ‘the electoral process isn’t working any more, maybe we have to resort to other means,’ and I don’t want that,” Paul said.

“I think there is the potential that when people have no representation, that they feel disenfranchised, that it can and might lead to violence in our country.”