To CNN’s Dana Bash, Paul denied any gendered difference in how he approached interviewers, but insisted that he needed a chance to resist the “editorializing” of an interviewer’s question. She asked if Paul would be able to control that temper on a debate stage with Hillary Clinton.

“I would treat her with the same respect that I would treat a man, but I wouldn’t lay down and say ‘I’m not going to respond,’” Paul said. “That would be a sexist sort of response, to say, ‘Oh, my goodness, she deserves to be treated as aggressively because she’s only a woman.’ I would never say that about anybody. I don’t come into our interview thinking, ‘Okay, it’s a woman-versus-man interview.’ I think she has tough questions, he will ask tough questions, I have to be prepared.”