Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reacted to comments from his colleague Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a day earlier on the Senate floor accusing him of being an agent for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Paul had objected to a unanimous consent motion for legislation to advance Montenegro’s bid to join NATO, to which McCain had attacked Paul.

In his “Morning Joe” appearance, Paul ripped McCain as being “past his prime” and “unhinged,” and then went on to argue questions about NATO deserved more consideration.

You know, I think he makes a really, really strong case for term limits. I think maybe he’s past his prime; I think maybe he’s gotten a little bit unhinged.  I do think that when we talk about NATO, there can be a rational discussion about the pros and cons of expanding it. We currently have troops, combat troops, in about six nations. We have troops actively just stationed in probably a couple dozen others. We have a $20 trillion debt. And one of my favorite articles of the last couple years is one that talked about the angry McCains, and if they — if we put active troops and got involved in combat where McCain wants us to be, they put a little angry McCain on the globe, on the map. And it’s virtually everywhere. So his foreign policy is something that would greatly endanger the United States, greatly overextend us. And there has to be the thought whether or not it’s in our national interest to pledge to get involved with a war if Montenegro has an altercation with anyone.

There’s also another argument, is that when you ask the people of Montenegro, only about 40 percent or slightly less are actually in favor of this. They are close to Russia, they’re close to being sort of, like Ukraine, in the transition from Europe to Asia. Perhaps it would be good to be like Switzerland and be more neutral and trade with both.  So, there’s a lot of considerations but to call someone somehow an enemy of the state or a traitor might be considered by most reasonable people to be a little over the top.

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