Trump Taps Markwayne Mullin For DHS. You May Wanna Check Your Life Insurance Policy.
The senator who tried to start a fistfight during a Senate hearing and made suspiciously timed stock trades before U.S. military strikes is Trump’s pick to protect the country. God help us.
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by Cliff Schecter
Only the MAGA movement—which has gifted us Jewish space lasers, a puppy shooter, and George Santos, Anthony Devolder, Anthony Zabovsky, and Kitara Revache…all one person!—could come up with someone as ridiculous as MarkWayne Mullin.
And only in our culturally degraded, learnin’s-hard land of the free, could this creature be handed the responsibility of protecting the lives of 342,378,397 Americans.
MMA Moron = DHS Doofus
Mullin, currently a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, former plumbing business owner and never-ending mouth, is more WWE heel than representative of the people. And, more generally, a MAGA-standard, extra-y-chromosome, science-denying asshole.
You know that cousin or brother-in-law who’s always showing up at family the BBQ to tell everyone how they’re doing everything wrong—when he/she hasn’t had a steady job since Titanic was in theaters, did two stints upstate for grand-theft auto, and recently kicked a sixteen-year heroine habit?
Yeah, that’s Mullin.
So with Donald Trump being who he is, and and this dingaling who he is—Trump, of course, had to name him his next nominee to be Director of Homeland Security (DHS).
[This is where in the horror movie a young, female character screams “we’re all gonna die!”]
The had to in that equation is some combination of Trump’s increasing dementia and the dimwitted, substance-free fraud he’s always been. Trump’s the Jim Carrey character in The Cable Guy. Television, and especially reality tv, rules his world. It’s why he’s always obsessed with ratings, what comedians say about him, etc.
Another part of this tv obsession is his determination whether someone “looks the part” for their job.
So in Mullin’s case, his ascendancy to DHS has nothing to do with what he knows—which is roughly on par intellectually with what drives a fevered mongoose. It’s all asshole-ishness. To Trump, that is the qualification.
Mullin struts around with a puffed out chest and planet-sized chip on his shoulder. His fake tough guy routine. He—technically—was a “professional MMA fighter,” even though his Senate bio which brags about this fact feels like a self-conscious teenager, admitting he only participated in five fights.
If that’s all it takes to go pro at something, I’m bound for the kitty-litter cleansing Hall of Fame any day now.
But Mullin did go 5-0 in those fights, you say, gazing at his bio. Except, he didn’t. The official MMA record says he only took part in three fights. Two against the same guy. Overall, he spent less than 10 minutes in an MMA ring in his life.
So why would he lie, making up two extra fights and trying to pretend they did something professionally longer than it takes me to stretch in the morning? Because that’s the level of self-loathing and low-rent narcissism that comes with being MAGA—and this dipstick is no exception.
In fact, that last paragraph is a solid metaphor for MarkWayne’s life.
Scratch the surface, and you find yourself rapidly sinking in a quicksand of scandal, gin-soaked intellectual pablum, and “Me Mongo” masculinity distilled into perfect MAGA stereotype.
But let’s roll it back for a second.
Trump nominated Mullin recently after Kristi Noem was beclowned during congressional committee hearings—or got “Lewandowski-d” you could say—by numerous Democrats. So Trump decided he needed a more serious, sober candidate.
I’m messin’ with ya! It’s frickin Trump! He went looking for the most macho thing he could find, and Arnold Palmer’s penis wasn’t available.
This is Trump, remember. When he had to appoint a UN Secretary in 2017, he was like “Nikki’s Indian, she’s has to understand all those shit-hole countries,” and Ms. Haley became Secretary. H looked at Ben Carson, and it was “Housing & Urban Development!” The same rodent-sized, leaking frigate—Trump’s cerebrum—sized up a know-nothing who presents as a Road House extra and I imagine it went like this: “he’s big, he likes to fight, and he’s from Oregon with all the mountain men. Perfect!”
MACHO MACHO MAGA MAN
Sure, Senator Two-Names’ most significant act in the world’s greatest deliberative body was challenging the Head of the Teamsters to take it outside…the Capitol (“Stand your butt up”), as he questioned him during a hearing on organized labor. Yes, in one of the more surreal moments in modern congressional history, Mullin challenged Teamsters’ president Sean O’Brien to take a disagreement outside and fight during a Senate hearing.
Not debate. Not argue policy. Fight. On the lawn.
Mullin stood up, held his breath long enough to look bigger, and told O’Brien they’d settle it “like two consenting adults.” Before Bernie Sanders had to intervene like a substitute teacher breaking up a playground brawl. Pro tip: when the chairman of a Senate hearing must remind you, “You’re a United States senator. Sit down,” it’s a good clue you’re not exactly operating at an Alexander Hamilton level of governance.
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And, sure, technically he’s a U.S. Senator as Bernie said...But is he really?
If you were casting a parody of modern American politics, and in particular the Trumpist-reject portion of our population, you’d simply have to concoct a guy like this.
Even the name! I’m sorry, but MarkWayne…really?
Well, the story goes when Mullin was born he was named by his mom for two paternal uncles, because she couldn’t pick one. She intended to fix this by dropping one of the names so he’d have a normal-person appellation…but then just kinda forgot. Hence, MarkWayne.
So we have a guy who will take over building a “border wall” between the U.S. and Mexico who can’t even put up a wall between his 2 names? (Phew, thank you for letting get that one out of my system).
But admit it. Go ahead. When you look at him, you’re not the least bit surprised his name is MarkWayne. He has the pissy, bearded, cowboy-hat-donning persona that makes it appear as if he joined the Senate just after departing the campfire scene of chili-chomping, methane-rocketing men in Blazing Saddles.
And the problem with our current reality is that Blazing Saddles isn’t satire. It’s what actually makes up much of the U.S. Senate. So, incredibly, this lumbering lummox will soon be running DHS (his confirmation is almost a done deal. An addled houseplant could be confirmed by Trump’s lackeys in the rigor mortis GOP Senate caucus).
And if you think the hearing that neared fisticuffs was MarkWayne’s only dalliance with unbridled anger, oh, I have stories. In 2017 he lost it and yelled at his constituents in a town hall meeting that it was “bullcrap” they, the taxpayers, pay his salary:
I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go.
Well, isn’t it nice he pays his taxes like the rest of us. But, indeed, his constituents were right, and he was…dumb? We the taxpayers, not his company, paid him $174,000 to—at the time—be a U.S. Congressman. This should not be challenging to understand.
One might even ask him about said company. That he sold it for millions while a member of Congress, breaking House Ethics rules that one not use their public office to promote their financial interests. Because, I’m just sure nobody with an interest in what he might do with future legislation affecting Oklahoma and the United States of America was the buyer(s) of his business.
Also, Congressman “I’m not Rambo” tried to go around our government—illegally—as we were evacuating Afghanistan in 2021. Mullin sought to rent his own helicopter to go in to rescue friends?…Donors? Who knows?!? What I do know is the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan gave him the same look I, or anyone else would, and kicked his rear out of their office.
Do you need more? Look, if toxic masculinity, .25 cent wings, and $2 pitchers of Miller Lite came to life the morning after, they’d be MarkWayne Mullin.
Such is the sound judgment of the man who’ll be in an incredibly consequential job where he’s supposed to protect America from Irani terror cells and his white supremacist base. You may wanna up your life insurance.
He Once Ate at an International House of Pancakes
At the 1992 Republican Convention, an early adopter of fash fashion in the GOP, right-wing lunatic Pat Buchanan, said of then Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas:
his foreign policy experience is pretty much limited to having eaten at an International House of Pancakes.
Bill Clinton studied to Oxford, and obivously lived abroad. To Mullin going abroad is crossing the Arkansas state line from his rural Oklahoma home. His résumé for running anything as complex as DHS would be hilarious if the stakes weren’t so serious.
He makes Heckuva Job Brownie seem like J. Robert Openheimer.
MarkWayne’s formal education consists of an associate’s degree in construction science from Oklahoma State University’s technical institute. Seriously.
Well, besides the few years he also spent at Oxford at St. John’s College.
I’m messin’ with ya again! He did not do that second thing at the world-renowned educational institution, just the first thing at the not-Southwest-U.S.-renowned one. Oklahoma State University’s technical institute was the end of MarkWayne’s formal education. If you don’t count learning how to bark when Trump tosses him some Chewy Pedigree.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with honest work in construction—plenty of people with trade backgrounds build great careers. But running DHS isn’t the same thing as installing drywall or bidding on a contract to snake toilets. It’s one of the most complicated national security jobs in the federal government, with multiple symbiotic relationships and interconnected safety concerns the make up American life.
Also yet Mullin’s shown himself to be—what’s the technical, or technical institute term again?—oh, right, a complete idiot. We’ll come back to that in a second.
But, again, in the cult loyalty to the eternal cloudiness of Trump’s spot-filled mind and “looking the part” is considered competence—so this isn’t disqualifying. It’s actually a résumé booster!
And not only is this guy an atavistic, slab of beef in a meat-packing factory, he’s weird. I mean really weird. Weird AF.
It’s gonna sound like I’m making this up it’s so repulsive and stupid, but I’m not. MarkWayne’s actually infamous for sneaking up on Senate colleagues and their wives and…picking their noses. Yes, I’m aware of what I just wrote, and I also can’t believe it.
As told by Kathleen Trott, wife of then GOP Congressman Mike Trott, who got stuck on a trip with about 40 members of Congress eight years ago, including this fucking weirdo:
We were in the clothes we’d been wearing for like 24 hours. We get on this bus, and it’s a couple-hour bus ride and people were..leaning on their spouse’s shoulder and falling asleep. And this idiot [MarkWayne Mullin] starts walking up and down the bus with his camera and anyone who fell asleep, he would put his finger in their nose and take a picture.
I said [to myself, ‘If that idiot comes near me when I fall asleep, I’m going to punch him. And I said to Dave: This is a U.S. congressman?
Why yes, yes he was! Soon to be a Senator. And then running DHS, because apparently nothing fucking matters anymore. So this nasal-spelunking chud’s will helm the agency responsible for protecting the continental U.S. from sarin gas attacks and providing port and aviation security, among other responsibilities.
Can he somehow stop an attack on us by harvesting Mojtaba Khamenei’s boogers?
One thing we do know, he won’t be operating in reality where bombs go boom and there’s danger of Iranian-sleeper-cell attacks after Trump started an astronomically blockheaded war for no reason.
Friend of BAM, journalist Jonathan Larsen, made this clear with his stellar reporting:
Mullin is expected to get a hearing next week from the Senate Homeland Security Committee for his nomination to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees federal immigration enforcement.
As I reported on Sunday, it was Mullin who connected the 2024 Trump campaign team with two men who claim Venezuela stole the 2020 election. But the documents and briefings they gave Trump’s team weren’t just about elections.
They also gave the Trump team information on hundreds of alleged gang members. Their information provided the basis for an unknown numbers of arrests and deportations and provided the White House with predicates for claiming extraordinary presidential powers.
And here’s the fun kicker:
All told, 252 Venezuelans were sent, without due process, to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison in March and April last year.
The Miami Herald reported that Berntsen and his team ‘were not able to confirm if all 238 Venezuelans [up to that point] sent to El Salvador were in fact criminals, but said that a significant number of them are. Most of those that were sent to El Salvador had criminal records, not necessarily from crimes committed in the United States but from the others countries from which they came.
So let’s get this straight. When not picking the noses of the unsuspecting and sleeping, MarkWayne will be working with conspiracy theorists to deport, without due process, any brown person for whom he doesn’t have the feels to El Salvadoran torture chambers. While also ignoring real threats to the homeland. How grand.
Market Manipulation For Senator Cowboy Hat
The bluster and theatrics also serve a purpose: they distract from the deeper issues swirling around this goon. New reporting indicates just days before U.S. military strikes in Venezuela—and later as tensions escalated with Iran—Mullin grabbed himself some stock in oil giants Chevron and ConocoPhillips and defense contractor RTX. Those stocks—shockingly!—surged after the conflicts escalated, potentially netting him tens of thousands in profit.
Btw, when a U.S. Senator sitting on the Armed Services Committee trades in oil and defense company stock right before military action, those aren’t optics that scream “public servant.”
It screams something else entirely.
Add in the bizarre personal controversies—including an infamous cosmetic mishap that left him explaining a strange nose injury in public (did he accidentally pick his own nose??), and the fact we let this guy leave Oklahoma, much less be about to take the job at DHS, is insane.
For in the end, Markwayne Mullin isn’t just one loud senator with a cartoonish name and a penchant for barroom bravado. He’s a symbol of what happens when politics stops valuing competence, decency, intelligence, and integrity—and starts rewarding spectacle, loyalty tests, and just enough chaos to to endanger every American.
And that’s where America currently finds herself. Ruled by semi-sentient stereotypes; an ignorant, amateur, loudmouth brawler, who’s likely an insider trader, and definitely an other-people’s-noses-picking baboon, who doesn’t know the first thing about homeland security.
And that could just end up getting all of us killed.
Who else in the administration, in Congress, big donors, or their families made suspiciously timed stock trades?
The entire KKKongress has devolved into a bad episode of Hollywood Squares. Meathead Edition.