♪ >> bloomberg politics special randall howard and rand paul. grexit i am putting myself forward. >> will be rand brand expand, or is the rand brand bland? tonight, the rand brand plan. >> that was pretty clever. that was all right. announcer: and i have got more. can rand paul do it all? it is total recall. he came in like a wrecking ball.

tonight on bloomberg politics. john: happy national rand paul announcement day. people. in our rand up tonight, the ophthalmologist from kentucky, but first, rand paul from kentucky. he made it official today. and for everyone who came out to see him he brought a special message. rand: i have a message. and message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. we have come to take our country back. today i announce with god's help, with the help of liberty lovers everywhere, that i'm putting myself forward as a candidate for president of the united states of america. john: mark, you were there in louisville, and you are still there in louisville.

tell us how did rand do? mark: a very solid internet. -- event. more than solid. with 1500 people in a ballroom, he delivered a speech that was pretty well done. the execution throughout the day, moving people and in and out, a solid campaign. he gave the speech he wanted to give, the message he wants to deliver, the message he thinks he will win or lose on. so i think a very solid day for rand paul. john: i am sure there are a lot of liberty lovers in that room. we are all liberty lovers in the end. i thought there was something telling in the fact that those words that he started his speech with, about how he had a message for the country, that he wanted to take the country back, that a similar what he said when he was elected to the senate.

except he said he had a message from the tea party. that encapsulates the whole rand paul thing. he has to be bigger than the tea party, no longer the flavor of the month. rand paul needs to be more than that. he took a step forward today but he is going to have a fight to get there. mark: he is going to have to hope the rules of the republican nomination change. if it is the old rules, he will not do well. he needs to be bigger than his dad, bigger than he was as a senate candidate am a bigger and bigger than the character of him as someone out of step with the party. i thought he showed he is well aware of all of those factors. john: many are asked him what he would look like as commander-in-chief. to help answer that question today, paul outlined his philosophy when it comes to national security. rand paul: i envision an amerco with the national defense that is unencumbered by overseas nationbuilding. [applause]

i envision a national defense that promotes, as reagan puts it, peace through strength. john: that would be a reason to stand by rand, but if you're looking for a reason to stand against him, here is a different talking point. this one courtesy of the foundation for a secure and prosperous american, a 501(c) four. >> rand paul is wrong, and dangerous. tell him to stop siding with obama, because even one iranian bomb would be a disaster. john: that was quite a welcome to the race. that group is not alone in going after rand. mark, as you know, lindsey graham and others are hard on this as well. do the justice of the peace -- is the question that these folks just do not like his ideas

or are they afraid of him in , some way? mark: i think they are afraid his ideas could catch fire. a residence with americans who may have sensitivity for him. on one hand they say this shows people are afraid of rand, and on the other hand dentists a lot of money to be dropped on the head of a god who still has got to divide himself on his own terms. john: loose talk about seven figures. i've not seen any confirmation of what the actual ad is. or where it is going to get spent. there is no doubt that there is an ideological split. between the neocon piece and the others. it feels emboldened, and the want to crush anybody on the ideological grounds. they feel it is dangerous for the party and the country. mark: as he adopts and modify

some of his foreign-policy situations, such as a to israel to be more acceptable, he was to , define himself not just on for policy national security, but on every policy on his own terms. that is going to leave him isolated, potentially defined before his the time and money on his own to fight back. john: we're in a moment right now in the republican party, as you know, and jeb bush is having to make apologies for james patterson the third. james baker is too liberal. if james is too liberal, and rand paul is going to be way too liberal. 42016. moving on to the next topic. some may say that rand paul has only an outside shot. and he would like to hear from someone who is high on his prospects. a voter from kentucky describing a run for the senate. kelly paul.

she is a relation. telly: first line of attack was telling me you know everyone says i have a less than 10% chance at winning. [laughter] i heard him speak that night in town square park, and i knew. with this uncertainty in clarity that sometimes you have in life, i just knew. i looked him in the eye and said if you do this, you're going to win, i know it. mark: after that impressive performance by kelly paul, i caught up with them in a chaotic scrum after the event, and i asked him how he rated his wife's performance. how you think she did? paul: she did great. mark: did she practice a lot? rand: i do not know. mark: were you able to watch her speech? rand: i was able to listen.

market? what do you expect her to do to help you win? he is expecting more of the same, including she is wanting a book tour in the coming days. she has a very high profile over some of the other spouses. my question to you is, is kelly paul a secret weapon or the secret weapon going forward? john: she is not secret anymore. i think a lot of people, this is the first time they saw her in the country and the party. she played a big role in his senate campaign, doing a lot of videos of things. she was very poised today. people seeing her on the stage today, they will understand how important and how big an asset a really solid spouse can be. look at her and say she looks like more of an asset than a liability or a no asset as it were. mark: with the exception of william jefferson clinton i am not sure there is another spouse involved in this contest to

could give a speech like she gave today. it was not super poised. if he is a republican nominee, she will have to step up, but for an announcement it was strong, and he needs more than anything else someone who loves him, who will testify to the country about what a big heart he has. he is not regularly good at showing his heart. she testified for him very power -- powerful, and i think you will see a lot more of that. john: if she has that level of poise, for a woman making her debut on the national stage, she was very poised. mark: 100%. in the fall people were over the moon -- and the paul people were over the moon. john: it would be pretty amazing if she were at the michelle obama level already. and ted cruz. pretty soon, there could be more than a dozen announced republican candidates, so, mark

on the basis of the speech, how is rand paul planning to position himself? mark: there is no one who can lay a stronger claim to them as rand paul. there are people in the establishment you say, sure he can win two of those or three of those come but that does not mean he will be the nominee. if he wins one or two of those, he would have quite a lot of steam. then going state-by-state, he is as well-positioned or better positioned as anyone in the field. john: in terms of geographic position, he looks very strong. he has serious digital chops on his campaign. they're going to try to organize and expand the caucus universe in iowa. trying to build and bring more people in. the same time, it is all about what exactly he is. with the thing that rand paul was, the brand of rand paul of two years ago, which is a much more unadulterated version of

isolationism -- i am sorry libertarian, that has been , watered down. he is trying to water himself down to become appealing to a broader sense. a broader segment of supporters, but might be losing some of his magic for the most ardent members of his base. that is the tricky balancing act he has to pull off. mark: do not forget the fund-raising piece. right now besides the strength in the states, there are people in his camp who believe he will have raised the second was the against all the other republicans except for jeb bush, and that includes what they say is an underrated plan to raise hard dollars from big bundlers. not just super pac, not just small dollars from the web. he's going to be formidable. i think it's some point, we will see a climactic showdown. they will come after him. if he does not lose it he's , going to be right in there in the final.

john: a lot of big ifs in there, but i agree with all of that. coming up, we will have more judging of rand paul, and rand paul wordplay. stick around. we will be right back. ♪

john: it is time to do to rand paul's speech and what we do after every song. break it down. he says he is different. not like the other republicans. make his point, today he waged two war. rand: as i watch our once great economy collapse under mounting spending and debt, i think what kind of america will our grandchildren see? it seems to me that both parties and the entire political system are to blame. under the watch of both parties,

the poor seem to get poorer and the rich get richer. we have squandered our victory by becoming part of the washington machine. that is not who i am. john: that is rand paul mark really being a different kind of republican. i have not heard many president candidate announcing their presidential bid, attacking their own party. not a common thing. still that is an unusual stance , to take. apolitical antiestablishment posture that is very, very gratuitous and very much out front. i do not know if that is the way to win, as someone would put it but it was striking today. mark: it leaves them vulnerable. part of the reason you do not hear a lot of the republicans coming to his defense when he is being attacked by big television ads because he attacks the party.

it is the very delicate balance. people in the party establishment and congress say we agree with his goal of expanding the party, we recognize there are flaws in the republican party, but they do not want to see their leading republican presidential candidate attacking both. john: if you were an independent candidate running for president, that would make a lot of sense but in a republican nominee electorate i just do not know if there is enough of the audience that once to hear them denouncing that. i think he is going to have to be a little careful there, or he is going to get himself in trouble. mark: it will be interesting to see how much he sticks with that particularly in republican debates. ok moving on, a big issue for , this guy will be that he sounds like a democrat in talking about changing business. how the federal government does its business. listen. rand: can you imagine what $1

stimulus could do for detroit, billion or for appalachia? i am convinced most americans want to work. i want to see millions of americans back at work. in my vision for america, we will bring back manufacturing jobs that pay well. more than $2 trillion in american profit currently sits overseas. in my vision for america, new highways and bridges will be built across the country, not by raising your taxes, but by lowering the tax to bring this american profit home. mark: john it sounds like barack , obama circa 2008. bring money home from work -- foreign corporations and build roads and bridges in america. john: in the speech there was an attack on crony capitalism, they have an element, as you know,

the tea party, the occupy wall street, they don't like big business, big government, but he at the same time is also talking about corporate tax holiday in order to bring the money home. that's also a special interest tax break to me. so there is a little bit of intellectual confusion going on there. there is no doubt it taps into something felt by working-class voters in both parties. mark: and for those that think this is all a garage -- mirage, his message is not going to find a big audience, they just need to think back to cap buchanan. he got big reaction from the crowd, it seemed like he was a real threat, and then somehow ended up being a paper tiger. john: hard to forget that great race. go, pat, go. market, -- market -- mark, give

us the next one. mark: one thing about rand paul, to paraphrase mario, most of his rhetoric is all pros know poetry. he wrote into his announcement speech today a very nice story very well written about helping a couple in guatemala who have failing eyesight. listen to how he tells this story, draining it of all intended effect. rand: one day in guatemala a man arrived and told me that i had operated on his wife the day before. his wife could see clearly for the first time in years, and she begged him to get on the bus and travel the winding roads and come back to our surgery center. he too was nearly blind. from hardened cataracts. after the surgery, the next day his wife sat next to me, as i unveiled the patch from his eyes, it was a harmful emotional moment for me to see them , looking at each other clearly for the first time in years. to see the face they loved again. as i saw the joy in their eyes i thought, this is why i became a doctor. mark: i don't want to diminish

his great work in guatemala, or i'd it went to diminish what he said was an emotional moment but if that is the way he tells an emotional story on the day of his announcement, i think he is going to have trouble connecting with people who want a president who speaks not just to their head but to their hearts and their gut. john: well, you want to do a bit of compare and contrast, when you think back to ted cruz and the announcements we have seen. all that rhetorical fire, deeply emotional. i mean whatever you think about ted cruz and his policies and ideology the performance level , was so high and felt so sincere, this felt very wooden very rote. this is one thing that rand paul does not seem to have. i have not seen much of a sense of humor, nor a sense of emotion. you would think that emotion would come relatively easily. if you cannot do that, you are right, voters want to see it

and he is want to have to find a way to get there. mark: my feel of the room was when i did my report card of the event, i thought it was the weakest part of the whole speech. that crowd was not swept away. his supporters are drawn to the liberty i gender. drawn to his ideas in general, it is just the messenger. but if you see him as commander-in-chief every day for four years, i think the performance level on that was not very good. they showed a video before the speech where they told much the same story and one about his grandmother. the video executed. rand paul, did not, i think, on that. john: the humanity that seem to follow him, his ideas and causes. there's no cause that means more to him than the cause of civil liberties. let's take a listen to this last soundbite. this one is on civil liberties.

rand: i say the phone records are yours. the phone records are none of their dam business. mark: no absence of emotion even a profanity from rand paul. if he could summon that emotion when telling story, we would be very different. what we're criticizing him for a few seconds ago. john: they are fired up by the issue. he knows it, and that is where he does have a fingertip field to play to the crowd's emotion. mark: i wanted to let him know he could keep one hand free because the constitution is there. at any rate after the break, the , constitution signed by rand paul, and more goodies from the rand paul emporium. we will be right back with that. ♪

john: rand paul has a ton of awesomeness on his website. we did some online windowshopping. and yes, this is all very, very real. >> the rand paul store takes it to another level. >> i want to see what is in this. >> we have the blocker. quest it is really just a little piece of plastic. >> that is actually a practical product. >> $15, that is a good deal. like this is a work of art. the constitution in your pocket. mark: i might just go online and buy a $20 pocket constitution and go to an event with rand paul and get him to sign it. that might save it. >> that is being entrepreneurial. that is what rand is fighting for. there is the get cozy with rand blanket. mark: that is a big blanket.

>> there is room for curled up two. next to the fireplace. mark: this strikes me as a safety net. doesn't this go against libertarianism? >> this is the market telling me how to say happy birthday to your favorite libertarian. with a three foot towel. it is the same picture as the blanket. it comes with a giant envelope. >> this is the best deal so far in the rand paul store. it is only $35. it seems like a giant kickstarter campaign. like, he should have a kickstarter campaign. i am running for president. these are my perk. do want a shirt, and iphone case, a giant blanket? john: the guy in minnesota wants that blanket. anyway the news is coming and breaking from the white house when we come back. , ♪

>> while we were gabbing, cnn reported that russia hacked the white house. the national security advisor says it does not leave its classified systems were compromised. lots more of this. [office phone chatter] [frogs croaking] you know what, let me call you back. what are you doing?! [scream] [frogs croaking] [yelling and screaming] it's back! xfinity watchathon week. the biggest week in television history. it's your all-access binge-watching pass to tv's hottest shows, free with xfinity on demand. xfinity watchathon week. now through april 12th. perfect for people who really love tv.

pimm: hello, i'm pimm fox and this is what i'm taking stock of on this tuesday, april 7, 2015. fedex will buy the delivery company that is european, tnt express for four , point. four $4 billion. ubs tried to buy tnt in 2013 but was locked by regulators. the fedex chief executive is confident the deal will go through. fedex chief executive: it will not result in a great deal of redundancies or market shares, which would appear to be problematic as was the case in the previous transaction. pimm: royal dutch shell is said to be in talks to acquire bg group.