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Rachel Maddow   |  October 28, 2013

Where'd you get your speech, Rand?

Rachel Maddow noticed a striking similarity between Rand Paul's description of the movie "Gattaca" and the Wikipedia version.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> the year was 1997 , ethan hawk and uma thurman were two of the biggest names in hollywood and teamed up to make an odd futureristic movie about life in a society where your genes and dna would determine where your life would go. your genetic make up was used to determine your usefulness to society.

>> ten fingers, ten toes. that's all that used to matter. not now. now only seconds old, the exact time and cause of my death was already known.

>> neurological conditions, 60%, manic depression , 40% probability. disorder, 99% probability. life expectancy , 32.4 years.

>> gatica was excellently weird in its own weird but it was a flop. it sold only enough tickets to take in a third of what it cost to make it so rearly nobody saw it mac in 1997 . or somebody saw it or read the wikipedia page about it because the speech that rand paul gave seems to have been totally plagiarized from the wikipedia page from gatica . what's weirder is trying to be a candidate for president, which rand paul is trying to do, and thinking that you're going to get away with lifting your speeches from wikipedia while doing that. rand paul traveled to the home of jerry farwell 's liberty union universit university. and the theme he used to illustrate that was basically he said that people who are pro choice on the issue of abortion are sort of like the evil autocratic state in the movie gatica . they want to kill off anyone whose genes are not approved of in society. people who are pro choice want to start practicing nazi eugenics in america. so therefore, vote for ken. it is kind of weird.

>> in the movie gatica , eugenics is coming and dna plays the primary role in determining your social climax.

>> the weird thing about that line in the not too distant future, eugenics is common is that that line appears almost verbatim in the wikipedia entry on gatica . hey, that's what rand paul said. and it's not a coincidence. it's a description of the plot line of gatica . due to frequent screaming, he faces genetic prejudice. the only way to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut is to become a borrowed ladder.

>> to the frequent screenings, facing genetic discrimination . the only way to achieve his dream of becoming abastronaut is he has to become a borrowed ladder.

>> his speech was totally ripped off of wikipedia . ethan hawk 's character assumes an identity of a former swimming star with a genetic profile second to none who had been injured in a car accident, leaving him senator.

>> he assumes the yidentity of a world class swimming athlete.

>> he is up there reading wikipedia .

>> right senator?

>> jerome buys his identity, uses his dna , blood, hair, tissue to pass the screening.

>> rand paul wants to be president but right now he is lifting whole sections of wikipedia entry and hoping no one will notice. herman cane plagiarized donna summer . but you know what? that was herman cane. when joe biden got caught in 1988 , that was seen as the end of his presidential run and it took him more than a decade because he was allowed back into the top tier . what will happen to rand paul ? we will let you know if we hear back. in the meantime, this is the last thing he needs right now. the sitting republican is now waiting on a possible election day and thanksgiving. he gets before election day is this duty at jerry fallwell talking about a 1990s umaer thisman -- thurman movie and plagiarizie ining wick paid ya -- wikipedia . i think rapnd paul is going to have to explain himself on this. we will keep you posted on what sort of explanation the senator will offer.