When Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma businessman, was trying to stand out in a crowded Republican primary in 2011, he made a striking promise: If voters sent him to Congress, he said, he would serve for just three terms before heading for the exit.
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Over the years that followed, Mr. Mullin, a former mixed martial arts fighter with right-wing views, would build close ties to Mr. Trump that helped him land in the Senate in 2023. By the time Mr. Trump returned to the White House last year, he had established himself as a steadfast MAGA loyalist and an indispensable Capitol Hill ally to a president who seems to prize fealty above almost anything else.
His political evolution culminated on Thursday, when Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Mullin to replace Kristi Noem as his homeland security secretary. {snip}
Mr. Mullin does not fit the traditional mold for a cabinet secretary. He has never held a prominent party leadership role. He has not served on any of the congressional committees that directly oversee the Homeland Security Department or immigration enforcement. He has no law enforcement experience, and before running for Congress, he had never worked in government.
But in Mr. Trump’s Washington, none of those things matter. What does is that, in his short Senate career, Mr. Mullin has become the senator perhaps mostly closely aligned with the president. By his own account, he talks to Mr. Trump often, and Republican and Democratic senators alike see him as a key link to the White House. Drawing on his House experience, he has fostered discussions between the chambers to help advance Mr. Trump’s legislative priorities. He has vocally endorsed the president’s hard-line immigration policies, and he has frequently echoed Mr. Trump’s skepticism and falsehoods about election integrity.
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Mr. Mullin was elected to the House in 2012, when the anti-elite ethos of the Tea Party movement propelled outsider candidates across the country. At the time, Mr. Mullin hosted a home improvement radio show and ran his business, Mullin Plumbing. The company ran regular television and radio commercials that featured Mr. Mullin introducing himself — “Hi, I’m Markwayne Mullin” — to the public.
His campaign website hammered home his disdain for Washington. Visitors were greeted by a photo of a genial Mr. Mullin next to the phrase “not a politician.” If they clicked, his biography was headlined: “A rancher. A businessman. Not a politician!”
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Despite his own background, Mr. Mullin did not initially gravitate to the outsider businessman in the 2016 presidential race. During the primary election, he instead endorsed Senator Marco Rubio.
But after Mr. Trump steamrolled the field, Mr. Mullin joined Republicans in lining up behind him. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mr. Mullin joined a Trump campaign outreach effort to Native American voters. As the president began reshaping the party during his first term, Mr. Mullin was among his most reliable backers, consistently voting with him.
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Mr. Mullin later said he had witnessed a Capitol Police officer shooting and killing Ashli Babbitt, one of the rioters who tried to rush into the House chamber as lawmakers cowered inside and rushed to escape, fearing for their lives. He later defended the officer’s actions, saying he had “saved other people’s lives.”
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His alignment with Mr. Trump’s policies remains strong, particularly around an aggressive approach to immigration. In 2024, at Mr. Trump’s behest, he voted to sink a bipartisan border bill that his Oklahoma colleague, Senator James Lankford, had negotiated.
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The post Markwayne Mullin, Once a Political Outsider, Moves All the Way In appeared first on American Renaissance.
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