In his early days in Congress, Markwayne Mullin tried pairing his suit jacket and tie with a pair of jeans on the House floor. Then-House Speaker John Boehner reprimanded the young Republican for breaking the dress code.
He might have come to Washington dressing as an outlier, but the 48-year-old – who still wears his cowboy hat on occasion to preside over the Senate floor – has learned a lot since.
Since coming to Washington in 2013, Mullin has built a brand on Capitol Hill as a straight-talking, former MMA fighter who is the rare partisan warrior who can tout White House talking points on Fox News and then sit down to cut the occasional deals with Democrats. The affable Oklahoman has spent decades building strong connections across both chambers in the US Capitol – which eventually helped catapult him into the president’s inner circle.
Now, Mullin is nominated to serve as President Donald Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, a post that will require him to execute the president’s signature campaign promise on immigration, which has turned into one of the party’s biggest political liabilities heading into the midterms. He is also about to test just how much he can keep his outsider bona fides while doing Trump’s bidding.
Mullin will sit before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Wednesday, just two weeks after he was suddenly tapped for the post and more than a month into a partisan government shutdown of the very agency that – if confirmed – he would run.
Now on the other side of the dais, Mullin is expected to face a grilling from Senate Democrats – some of whom have years-long friendships with him but are under intense pressure to oppose him amid the fractious immigration politics of this moment.
