George Stephanopoulos tries to get Rand Paul to admit that election wasn't stolen. Paul refuses, and sparks fly.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) refused to say that the election was not stolen despite ABC host George Stephanopoulos' attempts to persuade him to do so.

The senator traded verbal barbs with the former Clinton press secretary on Sunday.

What are the details?

The Republican lawmaker spoke to Stephanopoulos during Sunday's "This Week," where the two addressed reports of fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

Out of the gate, Stephanopoulos demanded, "Senator Paul, let me begin with a threshold question for you: This election was not stolen, do you accept that fact?"

Paul responded by pointing out that there's a bigger — and perhaps more important — question at hand.

"What I would say is that the debate over whether or not there was election fraud should occur, we never had any presentation in court where we actually looked at the evidence," he began. "Most of the cases were thrown out for a lack of standing, which is a procedural way of not actually hearing the question. There were several states in which the law was changed by the secretary of state and not the state legislature."

Calling that unconstitutional, Rand said that there's "still a chance that those [cases] actually do finally work their way up to the Supreme Court. ... Were there people who voted twice? Were there dead people who voted? Were their illegal aliens who voted? Yes, and we should get to the bottom of it."

Stephanopoulos interrupted, "I have to stop you there. No election is perfect. But there were 86 challenges filed by [former] President [Donald] Trump and his allies in court. All were dismissed. Every state certified the results."

He also insisted that former Attorney General Bill Barr even said that there was no "evidence of widespread fraud."

"Can't you just say the words, 'This election was not stolen?'" Stephanopoulos further pressed.

Refusing to be manipulated, Paul answered, "What I would suggest is that if we want greater confidence in our elections, and 75 percent of Republicans agree with me, is that we do need to look at election integrity and we need to see if we can restore confidence in the elections."

Stephanopoulos sniped that the reason 75 percent of Republicans agreed with him is because Trump "fed [them] a big lie."

Rand fired back, "George, where you make a mistake is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say 'Everything's a lie' instead of saying 'There are two sides to everything,'" he insisted. "But you say it's all lies. ... You say we're all liars. You just simply say we're all liars."

Stephanopoulos attempted to clarify, and responded, "I said it was a lie — that the election was stolen."

"The investigations that have taken place have shown there's not enough fraud to change the results of this election," Stephanopoulos reasoned. "That has been certified by every state."

Paul fired back, "I accepted the states' certifications, but it doesn't mean that I think there wasn't fraud, and that there weren't problems that have to be investigated. And it doesn't mean that the law wasn't broken."

Sen. Paul Joins ABC's "This Week" - January 24, 2021www.youtube.com

(H/T: The Daily Wire)