Rand Paul was given the opportunity to say something important about the race riots in Baltimore. Unfortunately he did not make use of it.

Paul spoke on The Laura Ingraham radio show on Tuesday and was asked to comment on the situation that has garnered global attention since the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. His response was both useless and vaguely insulting:

“It’s depressing, it’s sad, it’s scary. I came through the train on Baltimore last night, I’m glad the train didn’t stop. The thing is that really there’s so many things we can talk about, it’s something we talk about not in the immediate aftermath but over time: the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society. And this isn’t just a racial thing, it goes across racial boundaries, but we do have problems in our country.”

From the start, the response is flawed. Aside from the fact that no trains going from Washington DC to New York do not stop in Baltimore, the image of a potential world leader cowering in his box car is not flattering.

More importantly, the topics Paul choice to mention are wildly off the mark for explaining the situation that has arose in Baltimore and elsewhere since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson last year. His comment about ‘breakdown of the family structure’ and ‘the lack of fathers’ perpetuate a damning urban myth about absentee fatherhood in the black community.

Until recently, Paul stood out among conservatives for speaking openly and empathetically after the Ferguson killing. Five days after Michael Brown was shot, Paul wrote an op-ed piece in Time magazine. “If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off,” Paul wrote “But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.” He went on to criticize the police response and military level of their equipment.

These days Paul shies away from addressing the important but complicated issue of race relations in America. In South Carolina, a week after Walter Scott was gunned down by a police officer, Paul made no mention of the tragedy while giving a speech less than 20 minutes away from the scene of the crime.

Before being asked his thoughts on Baltimore, Paul had made no mention of it. His twitter is entirely focused on fundraising and a T-shirt contest for his campaign.

Race and police will be an important for whoever takes office in 2016. Hiding in trains and designing T-shirts are not the sort of activities one hopes to see in a potential leader.