How the Mullin hearing went off the rails

WASHINGTON – The president opened the hearing with a provocative challenge: Tell me to my face.

Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, made clear he has little respect for President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, fellow Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin. He says he will vote against him.

Their differences go back a long way.

Mullin called him a “fucking snake,” siding with Paul’s neighbor who left the senator with several broken ribs after a surprise attack, with the neighbor punching the senator while he was doing yard work in front of his house.

Paul calls Mullin a liar with anger management issues who lacks the temperament to lead the embattled Department of Homeland Security, which is at the forefront of Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

“Tell the world why you think I deserved to be attacked,” Paul said Wednesday in ordering the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“Explain to the American people why they should trust a man with anger issues to set a good example for ICE and Border Patrol agents.”

Mullin, a mixed martial arts champion who led workouts in the House gym – including with then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker of the House of Representatives seated behind him in the front row of supporters, took a cue from the Trump administration’s playbook.

Fight, fight, fight. He didn’t back down.

“If I have something to say, I’ll say it to your face,” Mullin retorted.

Combative agreements with the Cabinet

Mullin explained why he was tapped for the job, one of the presidential favorites to take over the agency as embattled Secretary Kristi Noem heads for the exit.

He reiterated what he had said about Paul, that he “can understand why your neighbor did what he did.”

“I make no apologies,” Mullin deadpanned at one point.

In what has been a tumultuous season of fiery committee hearings, the exchange was like no other.

Trump administration officials — and those aspiring to join the Cabinet — have clashed with members of Congress, mostly Democrats, who oppose the president’s people and policies. But the remarks from Paul, a fellow Republican who has also tangled with Trump as an outlier within the GOP, presented a rare bipartisan rebuttal. It shows Mullin’s narrow path to Senate confirmation, with a vote expected next week.

And it didn’t stop there.

Mullin was questioned for three hours about his own personality and public expertise for the Homeland job. He is not a policy buff, steeped in the intricacies of immigration enforcement, FEMA, or other homeland security operations. He’s also not a known management expert, having taken over his family’s plumbing business before joining Congress.

What Mullin brings to the job is a relationship with Trump — he has called the president a “friend” — and a reputation as an affable unifier of people across the political spectrum, regularly bouncing his stress ball as he walks the halls of Congress.

Senators push Mullin on secret trip

GOP colleagues praised Mullin’s character, and he broke down in tears as he recounted how Trump doted on his son, Jimmy, who suffered health problems while the president was busy campaigning in 2020.

But Mullin left senators perplexed about the secret trip he said he took a few years ago to a foreign country, which he described as having conditions akin to those of a war zone.

The senators said the FBI, which does background checks on executive branch nominees, had no record of such a trip, and committee leaders insisted that Mullin then meet with them at a secure location to discuss what they called his “super secret” mission to a foreign country.

“I didn’t say it was ‘super secret,'” Mullin said.

Yet it was the opening exchange that determined the tenor of the debate — and signaled how little support Mullin is expected to get in Thursday’s committee vote.

Paul opened with a plea to end the political violence that has spread across the country, from the start of his own political career in 2011, when former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot to death at a congressional event outside a Tucson grocery store, to practicing the 2017 congressional baseball game as he warmed up in the batting cage as a gunman opened fire, and so on.

“It is more imperative than ever that our country’s leaders disavow violence and lead by example,” Paul said.

He played video of Mullin almost getting into a scuffle with a union leader – telling him to “get off his ass” – during another Senate hearing in 2023.

Mullin acknowledged that he and Paul simply had their differences.

“We just don’t get along,” he testified.

Mullin said he and Teamsters union leader Sean O’Brien, seated behind him in the audience, became friends.

“I can put it aside if you’re willing to put it aside,” Mullin told Paul.

Paul turned around, “Somehow, you think I’ll just put this aside?”