Senator Mullin's Greatest Hits

No longer Just a Joke

(Originally Published in The Progressive Populist)

Last month, during the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, the junior Republican senator from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, chastised members of Congress who might have abused women, while forgiving Hegseth, who settled a lawsuit from a woman who claimed he actually had.

For Mullin, it was a Twerp De Force.

“How many Senators have showed up drunk to vote at night?” He asked. “Give me a joke … Any number of senators here have cheated on their wives, have been forceful with women, have taken drugs.”

And here was his dismount:

“We’ve all made mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. The only reason why I’m here and not in prison is because my wife loved me, too. I have changed, but I’m not perfect — but I found somebody who thought I was perfect. But just like our Lord and Savior forgave me, my wife’s had to forgive me more than once, too.”

Give me a joke — really?

OK.

The new secretary of defense, thrice-married Pete Hegseth, was abusing his mistress when he said, “Suck it up, buttercup, Jesus already forgives me.”

Too soon?

Like his political lodestar, Tom Coburn, who also promised to spend only three terms in the House — he was not going to be a career politician, though he then spent 10 years in the Senate (apparently that time in government didn’t count) — Mullin, too, promised to leave after three terms as representative for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District — and then didn’t.

“I’m not hiding from that because we did say we’re going to serve six years,” he said, before adding, “I don’t think there’s one person that’s never changed their mind six years apart from each other or how they would approach things.”

Such an orator.

He wasn’t hiding from the fact he gave his word, you understand, he just wasn’t going to be bound by it, which is really the whole point of giving your word.

Mullin, a plumber by trade, could have said — and I would have been sympathetic — that he wanted to stay in Congress because it’s a much better gig representing constituents of the 2nd District than it is cleaning out their pee traps, but then he couldn’t have hid behind Jesus, his family, and the then — and now current — president.

Through the years, the musings of Markwayne Mullin could have been a drinking game.

In 2013, after President Obama was re-elected, Mullin told a supporter to grow-up, while simultaneously pouting about having to.

“I believe what you’re saying and I don’t support this president whatsoever, but ma’am, we lost that. Who would’ve thought we would ever actually be questioning if we had a natural-born president being president?”

Who? Well, you, actually.

He once reminded Americans in all 56 states about the majesty of our system of governance.

“This country isn’t ran by just one individual it’s ran by four branches, but three branches that are in control of this. As long as those three branches control it, then we all have to figure out how to negotiate.”

He has opined on the inherent duplicity in people in workout gear.

So … I’m buying my groceries … and I noticed everybody was giving that card. They had these huge baskets, and I realized it was the first of the month. But then I’m looking over, and there’s a couple beside me. This guy was built like a brick house. I mean he had muscles all over him. He was in a little tank top and pair of shorts and really nice Nike shoes. And she was standing there, and she was all in shape and she looked like she had just come from a fitness program … and they go up in front of me and they pay with that card. Fraud. Absolute, 100 percent, all it is fraud … it’s all over the place.

Mullin also doesn’t want to be beholden to his constituents, telling them he doesn’t need their stinking money.

“You say you pay for me to do this? That’s bullcrap. 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. This is a service for me, not a career,” he said. “I thank God this is not how I make my living.”

Speaking of God — and when doesn’t he? — he thinks the “separation” in the separation of church and state shouldn’t be applicable to the state.

“If we want to put prayer back in our schools, our communities have to stand up; the churches have to stand up; the parents have to stand up. They have got to say, ‘No, we want it in our schools.’ We’re going to do what we want to do because it’s our schools. It’s our public schools.”

He is a fighter, an MMA one to be precise, who once led a one-man mission, his, to Afghanistan to free hostages, only to be arrested in Tajikistan for exceeding the country’s entry requirements of $10,000. He came up with a harebrained to funnel the ten grand through operatives in Tbilisi, Georgia, with the help of the U.S. Embassy before asking the U.S. Embassy if it would help.

It didn’t.

Mullin said he has no regrets about auditioning for “Rambo III: Righteous Plumber.”

And just last year, at a congressional hearing, he challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a fight, demanding O’Brien “Stand your butt up!”

Senator Markwayne Mullin is a petty, self-aggrandizing, intellectually lazy, and self-satisfying bully. But considering he is now a majority member on the Armed Services, Environment and Public Works, Waste Management, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committees, he can no longer be seen as a joke.