Rand Paul Liz Cheney
© Pool via REUTERS / Alex Edelman; REUTERS / Mark Makela(L) Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky); (R) Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming).
After Senator Rand Paul objected to her amendment to the military funding bill that would block the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Congresswoman Liz Cheney questioned his patriotism and took a potshot at his height.

Paul (R-Kentucky) is holding up the National Defense Authorization Act, "blaming America, and delaying hazardous duty pay to hundreds of thousands of our service members and their families. Inexcusable," Cheney (R-Wyoming) tweeted on Thursday above a video of Paul's speech in the Senate.

"Rand and I do have one thing in common, though. We're both 5'2" tall," she added.


Cheney is Wyoming's sole representative in the House, and the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, widely considered the grey eminence of the George W. Bush administration and the chief architect of its 'War on Terror.' US troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001, and Cheney inserted an amendment into the NDAA that would mandate congressional approval for their withdrawal.

Paul, whose father Ron was one of the few voices opposing the 'War on Terror' during his tenure in Congress, called Cheney out for hypocrisy, having once argued for unified and unlimited executive power - as long as it's only to start and prosecute wars.


"Which is it? Are you for this unlimited power of the president to commence and execute war," but against it "if the president chooses to end a war?" Paul said on the Senate floor. He called out the "hypocrisy" and "rank demagoguery" of people who argued that - not just Cheney, though she authored the contested amendment, but also several fellow senators like Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma).

He even quoted the late senator John McCain as someone who believed there shouldn't be 535 commanders in chief - referring to the number of members of Congress - before arguing that Cheney's amendment does just that.

Cheney's resort to schoolyard insults hasn't fared too well on Twitter, with most of the responses favoring Paul.

She had used the same playbook during their epic Twitter battle in September 2019, when she called the Kentucky senator a "big loser" for his failed 2016 presidential bid, and accused him of loyalty to "Terrorists First, America Second."