The new nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security walked into his confirmation hearings with an unexpected endorsement in tow.
“If anyone is willing to stand their butt up to protect America, it’s Markwayne Mullin,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a playfully worded statement from early March, shortly after it was announced that former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was out as DHS secretary and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) was in as her replacement to head the sprawling agency.
O’Brien’s words echoed the taunts that the two had thrown back and forth at each other in an actual Senate hearing that almost ended in a knockdown, drag-out fight.
In a November 2023 Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, the freshman Oklahoma senator and former MMA fighter read out words that O’Brien had written about him on social media.
O’Brien had called Mullin a “clown” and a “fraud” who should “quit the tough guy act” unless he was willing to take the union leader on physically.
“You know where to find me. Anyplace, anytime, cowboy,” Mullin read O’Brien’s words back to him. He followed those with a challenge of his own: “Sir, this is a time, this is a place. If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”
More heated words followed:
O’Brien: “Okay, that’s fine, perfect.”
Mullin: “You want to do it now?”
O’Brien: “I’d love to do it right now.”
Mullin: “Well, stand your butt up then.”
O’Brien: “You stand your butt up, big guy.”
And that’s what he did. The Oklahoma senator stood up, began to remove the wedding band from his left hand, and started to walk around the raised dais to get at O’Brien.
Then-HELP Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) intervened. Through a mix of orders, shaming, and a whole lot of banging of the gavel, the octogenarian managed to avoid a nightmare scenario of one of his colleagues pummeling a witness.
Sanders likely did both men a favor that day.
O’Brien looks to be in good shape for a labor leader, but Mullin, now 48, is an unusually fit and dangerous senator. He could have done serious damage.
Mullin went to college on a wrestling scholarship and was undefeated in his MMA career. He won one fight on a technical knockout with punches and the other two on submissions, with one rear-naked choke and one armbar. All of these victories occurred in under 1:30 of fighting, according to the MMA site Sherdog.
Had Mullin pummeled a witness, he would have likely faced censure and would have had a much harder time ascending to the top of one of the federal government’s largest agencies.
O’Brien’s endorsement of Mullin may help his ascent. President Donald Trump’s second term has played a role in that rapprochement between O’Brien and Mullin, a House member for 10 years before winning a 2022 Senate special election.
“President Trump has a way of bringing people together. I’d like to see if labor can help us build in America again,” Mullin explained nearly two years after his conflict with O’Brien.
Mullin has been much nicer to O’Brien in subsequent Senate hearings. The Teamsters head reciprocated, featuring Mullin on his Better Bad Ideas podcast.
At the end of the podcast, O’Brien told Mullin, “For the record, I’m not a hugger, but I’ll shake your hand.”
Better inside than outside
There is a growing bipartisan consensus that Mullin will replace Noem, who badly mismanaged her portfolio. She fanned the flames in Minnesota after the Customs and Border Protection-involved shooting death of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, by initially calling his actions an “act of domestic terrorism,” for instance.
Homeland is currently only partially funded, causing long airport backups and other inconveniences. Because of past performance, Senate Democrats want concessions related to immigration enforcement before they will relax their filibuster chokehold and allow the funds through.
Yet, in the face of this, Noem has not been fired. Rather, she has been reassigned as a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a Western Hemisphere cooperative military initiative of the Trump White House.
As with Noem, so with much of the administration. Mike Waltz was ousted as national security adviser amid complaints from Trump-influencer Laura Loomer, and is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Billy Long was perhaps misnamed, given his short tenure as IRS commissioner, but he has been nominated to be the administration’s ambassador to Iceland.
Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, has come under tremendous fire from all sides. Trump recently announced on social media that she has breast cancer but is not going anywhere, and will even work to the greatest extent possible while undergoing treatment.
This is a marked departure from the personnel policies of the first Trump administration, which evoked the feeling of a revolving door. Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, lasted only from the inauguration until the end of July. Michael Flynn was the national security adviser for less than a month. White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci made it all of 10 days.
And when people got turned out unceremoniously, they behaved about how you would expect former employees with a chip on their shoulder to act. Departed officials tended to speak out negatively about Trump and his administration. One-time press secretary Stephanie Grisham, for instance, became a fierce Trump critic and even testified before the Jan. 6 committee.
Even higher-profile employees-turned-critics were ex-Defense Secretary James Mattis and former White House chief of staff John Kelly. Kelly called Trump “unhinged.” Mattis said Trump understood about as much as a sixth grader. Also, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a “moron,” while he was still on the job.
KRISTI NOEM BAGGAGE BLEEDS INTO MARKWAYNE MULLIN CONFIRMATION FIGHT
Someone appears to have taken a lesson from this and determined that the second time around would be different. Trump 2.0 has screened more for loyalty in its hiring and has shown those hires some loyalty in return.
That’s quite a change from a man whose signature line had been, “You’re fired.”
Jeremy Lott (@jeremylottdiary) is the author of several books, most recently The Three Feral Pigs and the Vegan Wolf.