Rand Paul to Newsmax: Obama's 'Bait and Switch' Makes Terror Attacks About Gun Control

"From the very beginning, the president's been trying to do a bait and switch on the American people," Paul, who is seeking the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, said Monday.

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"He wants to make this about his liberal agenda, which is gun control and not about terrorism," Paul said.

Paul made the comments during an in-depth interview with Ed Berliner on "The Hard Line," to be aired Monday at 9 p.m. ET, on Newsmax TV.

On Sunday, Obama vowed to hunt down anyone plotting militant attacks against the U.S. and to "destroy" the Islamic State (ISIS). In an address to the nation from the Oval Office, he sought to reassure Americans after last week’s California shooting rampage in which 14 were killed.

U.S.-born Syed Rizwan Farook, and his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday party for civil servants in San Bernardino — an attack that has been called terrorism by officials.

In his speech, the commander-in-chief tried to counter mounting criticism he has not acted decisively enough to keep the U.S. safe from ISIS, stating, "The threat from terrorism is real but we will overcome it."

But Paul told Berliner, "If we want to know how we could've prevented this and how we can protect against future attacks, we need to look at who we're letting into our country and what are the rules for gaining entry into our country.

"I put forward legislation that would say 'look, we just have to put a halt on immigration from the Middle East until we can be more certain that the people who are coming here and the people who are already here are not here to attack us.'"

Paul said the famous poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor — "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" — which welcomed immigrants entering the United States since the early 1900s, is no longer applicable.

"When that poem was written, people didn't come to America to be put on welfare. All the refugees who come to our country are immediately enlisted and enrolled in welfare. They're put on government housing, extended government check and given food stamps," Paul said.

"We got a lot of people in our country who are suffering without saying that we're going to open up and bring all of the world's refugees here. The other problem is that the president says we only want to admit 10,000 refugees.

"Well then all their families apply and through the family immigration process, 10,000 becomes 100,000 and I'm not without sympathy. Look, my church has helped families to come to this country, but at the same time we can't do it without having sufficient vetting to make sure that we're not admitting people who wish us harm."

Paul said he does not believe surveillance methods to weed out potential terrorists need encroach on the liberties of Americans.

"I'm for looking at all the records of terrorists or anybody we suspect of terrorism. I just don't want to look at all the records of all Americans without a warrant," Paul told Berliner.

"The Fourth Amendment says that to look at someone's records, the government has to individualize it. They have to put an individual's name on the warrant, they have to say what they want to look for and then they have to have suspicions or probable cause. I'm all for that.

"The police have made [use of] the Constitution every day to deal with murderers and rapists and horrible people. We should do the same with terrorists."

Paul said Americans tend to get distracted by fears that their phone records and emails are being monitored.

"We get so many records that the haystack becomes so big, they think we actually don't go deep enough into it to actually figure out who are the ones that would attack us. I would use investigation, I would use suspicion and I would look at all the records of terrorists," he said.

"Think about the Boston bombers. We were so busy collecting everybody's information that we didn't bother to know that one of them traveled back to Chechnya. We didn't bother to continue to investigate even though the Russians had tipped us off.

"I'm for more investigation of people for whom we have suspicion, but I'm not for the big drag where we take up all we scoop up and vacuum up all Americans records. I don't think you have to give up liberty for security."

A Monmouth University poll released Monday shows Paul in sixth place in Iowa among the GOP presidential candidates, with 4 percent support.

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