“If people want to say I changed my position, it’s untrue,” Paul told POLITICO on Thursday from the Capitol. “It’s the exact same position. It’s always been about opposition to targeted killing, doesn’t matter if it’s with a drone, a sniper rifle, a spear, a knife. I’m against targeted killings. What people don’t understand is that when there is a violent act going, a gun fight, when people are shooting back-and-forth and the police are being shot at, the police have always been allowed to use deadly force.

“That’s all I was trying to say on Neil Cavuto and people who say otherwise, I think, are up to some other nefarious motives.” …

“Rand is a grassroots champion and has a huge, devoted following that will be with him through thick and thin,” said Benton, who ran Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in 2012 and is managing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign. “There is a very small, but extremely vocal, group of contrarians that throw a tantrum anytime Rand does something they don’t quite understand, but the vast majority of the ever-growing Tea Party and Liberty movement is with him 100 percent.”