For weeks, Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (R-Ky.) has urged Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE not to appoint John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to a position in his administration, and now he's threatening to block any such move, should it occur.

Paul said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that he’s an “automatic no on Bolton.”



"John Bolton doesn’t get it. He still believes in regime change. He’s still a big cheerleader for the Iraq War,” Paul said. “John Bolton is so far out of it and has such a naive understanding of the world.”

According to reports Saturday, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson leads the race for the position of secretary of State, but Paul said Sunday he'd be against Bolton even in a secondary position at the State Department.

In a November op-ed, Paul wrote that "Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years — particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president."

Paul said Bolton has stood more often with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE than with Trump on foreign policy issues.

Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, said last year that he didn’t regret supporting the decision to invade Iraq, calling it “correct.”

“I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct. I think decisions made after that decision were wrong, although I think the worst decision made after that was the 2011 decision to withdraw U.S. and coalition forces,” he said at the time.

Paul has said "no man is more out of touch with the situation in the Middle East or more dangerous to our national security than Bolton."

For that reason, Paul thinks Bolton should be "nowhere close to the State Department if anybody with a sane worldview is in charge."