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Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a cowboy-hat-loving Trump loyalist, nearly got violent with a congressional witness.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has chosen a cowboy-hat-wearing former MMA fighter who once nearly challenged a witness to fight and who likes to bounce a rubber ball to relieve stress to be the new leader of the Department of Homeland Security.
On Thursday, Trump announced Kristi Noem, the face of his disastrous immigration crackdown in Minnesota, would be replaced by the at-times confrontational and pugnacious GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
“I am super excited about this opportunity,” Mullin told reporters. “It came not as a complete surprise, but as a little bit of a surprise.”
“It’s just pretty humbling when you start to think about it,” he added. “Little kid from west Oklahoma gets to serve in the president’s cabinet. That’s pretty neat.”
Mullin, 48, is well-liked among his Senate GOP colleagues and by Trump. He’s been one of Trump’s top defenders on Capitol Hill, making seemingly nonstop appearances on cable news shows defending his administration, a strategy that almost certainly helped him get the nomination.
WATCH: Oklahoma senator challenges Teamsters president to a fight during Senate hearing
Nov 14, 2023
A Senate hearing escalated into a near brawl on Tuesday when Oklahoma's Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin asked Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, if he wanted to fight “right now.”
The move came after O’Brien, testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions about unions, challenged Mullin, who fought as an MMA fighter prior to coming to Congress, to a fight in June on X, formerly known as Twitter.
O’Brien’s social media post called Mullin a “clown” and “fraud” and ended with, “You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy.” The thrust of O'Brien's post challenged Mullin's "self-made" characterizations of his business background.
Mullin used his time during questioning to confront O’Brien over the comments. “Sir, this is a time. This is a place. You want to run your mouth? We can be two consenting adults — we can finish it here,” Mullin said.
“OK, that’s fine. Perfect,” O’Brien responded to the challenge.
"Well, stand your butt up then,” Mullin taunted, with O’Brien telling Mullin to do the same.
Committee chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who was running the hearing, began pleading for them to stop.
“This is a hearing and God knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress," Sanders said.
“We’re not here to talk about fights, or anything else,” Sanders said.
Our DOJ
GOP tried to entrap Dr Fauci but he outplayed the MAGA-MAHA Senate panel
Senator Kennedy explain how it works at 21 weeks. This is painful to watch but this is exactly what Kamala Harris supports 🤔
We’re NOT Doomed, because Republicans gave us a gift.
Tomorrow at 10am eastern, the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee will be holding a hearing titled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs.”
If you can’t figure out what this is going to be about, let me help. Most people who get abortions use mediation. The most used medication is Mifepristone, and Republicans want to make this the year that all abortions become illegal.
Here’s the problem for them. This is not a popular stance. According to a PEW poll in 2024, 63% of all Americans think abortions should be legal in all or most cases. So, our job is to reach them and make sure they know as much as possible about this hearing.
It will be lead by Republicans, Chair Bill Cassidy, a gastroenterologist. Notice how he’s not an OBGYN, but he will do his damnedest to make you think otherwise during this hearing. And on the Dem side, will be Ranking Member, Bernie Sanders, and former Chair, Patty Murray.
Where Cassidy has no real life experience with this subject, Murray has it in spades. She is the former chair of the HELP committee and along with Hillary Clinton, a fellow Senator at the time, was responsible for the FDA approving Plan B in 2006. In November, she led ALL Senate Dems, yes, including Fetterman, in a letter to RFK Jr. and USDA Commissioner, Martin Makary against their Mifeprisone review.
And, as Senator Murray put it in a briefing I was in yesterday about this hearing:
These are people who want to see all abortion banned everywhere for any reason.
And that’s the bottom line, and anything we can do to show that that’s the goal of this hearing will help us and hurt them.
Like, reminding people that a CNN study in 2023 literally found that Mifepristone is safer than Viagra and penicillin. And yet it’s more regulated than almost any other drug on the market. Shockingly, the New York Times put out an incredible piece about how safe it is yesterday, just in time for this hearing.
So, knowing that, here are the arguments we expect them to try to make. They’re probably gonna try “weaponizing water.” Basically, their newest argument is using environmental regulations and saying that medical abortions pollute waterways. I really wish I was joking. Will that be brought up in the hearing? Well…you’ve seen what these Republicans are willing to say, so I’d bet yes.
The other argument will be from a “study” from the Republican think tank EPCC that somehow found that 11% of patients who took Mifepristone had adverse effects, when the actual number is less than 1% by a significant margin.
We have the research to back all this up, and they don’t. The thing is, they’re really good at convincing people of things that aren’t true, and we’re really bad at putting it in plain English why they’re lying. That’s why social media is so important tomorrow.
It’s important to lift up Dr. Nisha Verma, the Dem witness, who is an OBGYN and has testified before Congress before, she also has first hand experience with the effects of these restrictions.
On the other side, Republican witness, Elizabeth Murrill, is the AG in Louisiana, the first state in the nation to classify Mifepristone as a controlled substance, which, according to a New Orleans Health Department report, has made all maternal care more risky.
And they also have Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, who is a pro forced-birth OBGYN who has said lies such as “Abortion violates the bodily integrity and the rights of the mother, exposes her to injury and death, and kills the unborn child, with no evidence of benefit.” in previous Congressional testimony.
Finally, they know how unpopular their stance is, so they’re gonna try to convince people watching the hearing that they don’t actually want to get rid of all abortion, and Republican social media is going to try to make it seem like Trump is more moderate than whatever comes out of this hearing.
But aside from the Mifeprisone review, I already mentioned, in late December he banned abortion procedures by the VA. He pushed Republicans to ban abortion coverage by ACA marketplace plans. In March he pardoned 23 people to attacked abortion clinics. He’s been nominating pro forced birth federal Judges. Not to mention defunding Planned Parenthood in September, and some of the first things he did were sign executive orders against reproductive rights. So no, he is not moderate, no matter what people try to get you to believe.
I know this is long, but I promise, I’m almost done. You can watch the hearing on the HELP website, on CSPAN or on the SenateInSession social media accounts. If you can’t watch the hearing that’s okay, there will be dozens and dozens of clips posted throughout the day, when you see one, repost it and if it’s a Dem, make sure to follow them, if they’re good in this hearing, they’ll be good in other ones too, and you don’t wanna miss that.
Bottom line, we have the power to make Republicans look like fools tomorrow, let’s not waste it.
Couple things….
Why are we, among other unpleasant governance, choosing to be run as a gerontocracy!? When a political leader touts the dangers of “marijuana” (cannabis) it shows the historic way of thinking they believe in. Collins announced she was retiring, was it 2 cycles ago? She is just as bad as Biden, Grassley, McConnell (tortuga), or frankly Donald Trump. From a far gone era without the understanding of a far more complex, digital world, and the diverse array of advances in society today.
Cannabis is not a dangerous drug. This isn’t the age of Reefer Madness that she grew up in. We are the only country that calls cannabis marijuana. We started calling it that to demonize and disparage Mexicans in the 19th century. There is not a SINGLE known cannabis/THC overdose EVER recorded. Have people gotten ridiculously high eating too much THC? Yes. I have been one of those people 🤣 Yet is poses no threat to loss of life.
I have an idea on how to eliminate “transnational criminal organizations” from growing and distributing cannabis illegally.
FEDERALLY LEAGALISE IT!!!!
For f*cks sake!! The prohibition of cannabis is both idiotic and racist. It serves no purpose than to incarcerate people of color and as a shistey source of funding for local law enforcement agencies. It needs to end.
I forgot, and I don’t feel like looking it up because I’m just ranting, but. I’m a Colorado native, we legalized medical cannabis at the start of the century and (because of time zones, other states did in the same cycle) we were the first state to recreationally legalize cannabis. Not only did it eliminate the black market. Not only did it defund cartels. Not only did the potency, quality, and safety improve significantly, not only did it create quite successful small businesses owners and growers, not only did it provide thousands of middle class jobs, Not only did it bring an EXTRAORDINARY amount of tax revenue, that the voters of Colorado chose to fund public schools and rehabilitation programs, it it gave SOOOO much extra tax revenue to the state that in 2022 the governor sent EVERY TAX PAYING RESIDENT $750!!
C’mon guys!!! We can do better than these expired, geriatric, out of touch, and clueless political leaders. Leaders who think cannabis is dangerous.
Give me a break Susan Collins. You promised to retire before you ran previously. Do us a favor and hold true to that promise.