Kentucky senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul savaged Donald Trump — and questioned the judgment of his supporters — for a third straight day on Monday, calling the billionaire presidential candidate a “fake conservative” and a “bully” and suggesting his followers suffer from a “lack of logic.”

After publishing an op-ed Monday morning accusing Trump of being a “fake conservative,” in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon Paul blasted the real-estate mogul’s support for the 2008 bank bailouts, his reversal on Obamacare, and his open boasts about buying political influence.

“The Tea Party is unhappy with the machine that is Washington, the corruption, the idea that politicians are bought and sold,” Paul said. “I think if most tea-party Republicans knew that Donald Trump had said that he gives to politicians because they’ll do whatever the hell he tells them to do, that sort of crass nature is not the sort of thing the vast majority of tea-party conservatives are for.”

Paul is struggling to shake up his campaign in the midst of a major slump. After sliding from 10 percent support in an April survey by Public Policy Polling (PPP) to barely 3 percent in PPP’s latest poll, the libertarian-leaning Republican has chosen to launch an all-out assault on the Republican front-runner since he first challenged him early in last Thursday’s debate.

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Paul exhorted Republicans to “wake up” during a campaign stop in South Carolina on Saturday. “Where is our common sense?” he asked. He continued the onslaught the next day during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, saying Trump has “been for all these liberal policies [in the past] and now because he can stand up and say vulgar things he’s a truth-teller. . . . I have no idea what his real philosophy is other than that he is for promoting himself.”

The Kentucky senator said on this afternoon’s conference call that he felt compelled to speak up forcefully about Trump’s outbursts, even if most other White House contenders won’t. “I think that if no one stands up to a bully, the bully will just keep doing what they’re doing,” he said.

#related#He also took veiled shots at Trump’s supporters, suggesting their enthusiasm can border on puerile. “I think that while some people are excited by fat jokes and stupid jokes, I think there are a lot of people in the general electorate — independents as well as many women voters — [who] aren’t really that entertained by this,” he said, pointing to polls that show him beating Hillary Clinton in some blue-leaning states.

“Is there really anything substantive coming out of saying ‘people are fat, people are stupid’?” Paul asked. “That kind of logic, you just have to wonder, um, if somebody really needs to point out the sort of lack of logic, the lack of anything substantive being said. . . . Apparently not enough people are noticing that we’ve got an empty suit here, full of bravado but not full of anything meaningful for the country.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.