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Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma senator chosen by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Homeland Security who will be considered by the Senate on Wednesday, has never served in the US military, but he routinely speaks as if he did in interviews.
Two days after the US attacked Iran, for instance, Mullin told Fox News: “War is ugly. It smells bad. And if anybody has ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happening around you and taste it, and feel it in your nostrils, and hear it, it’s something you’ll never forget. And it’s ugly.”
While Mullin’s words might have lead many viewers to assume that he was speaking from personal experience, he went on to suggest, in a somewhat confusing manner, that he was actually talking about what he imagined the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had been through.
“Fortunately you have President Hegseth, or I say President Hegseth, Secretary Hegseth, that has got a great relationship with President Trump, and President Hegseth’s been there, he’s done that,” Mullin said, with something less than clarity.
Mullin did not serve in any branch of the US armed forces, but inherited a plumbing company and took part in a handful of mixed martial arts fights, so it is unclear what experience he describes in interviews. According to Axios, which spoke with people who have heard the conversations, the senator has privately hinted to colleagues that he was involved in dangerous private security work in Middle East war zones before running for Congress in 2012.
His past statements came up during his nomination hearing on Wednesday, during which the Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs will consider whether he should replace Kristi Noem, who Trump fired as homeland security secretary earlier this month. In response to questioning from Democratic senator Gary Peters of Michigan, Mullin said he has never traveled to a foreign country outside of vacation or mission work.
But the day after he spoke of the smell and taste of war, Mullin was asked for his thoughts on Iran by Buck Sexton, a conservative radio host and former CIA officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You are a veteran, you understand war,” Sexton said in a phone interview with Mullin. “What do you make of what we’re seeing so far?”
“Well, first of all, let me clarify: I did special assignments outside of DoD, now DoW,” Mullin said, referring to the Department of Defense, newly rebranded the Department of War. “I never wore the uniform or the flag on my shoulder. Might’ve been in the same area … but the guys that signed the contract, I got to work alongside of those guys and they’re phenomenal individuals.”
This month was not the first time that Mullin has spoken as if he has been through combat when, in fact, he has not.
In an interview with Fox News on 7 January 2021, the day after he had tried to help Capitol police officers defend the House chamber from pro-Trump rioters, Mullin said: “Some people there got nervous, there’s a lot of members that was in that chamber that never dealt with a situation like that, and I’ll tell you, I’ve never dealt with a situation like that on US soil.”
Later that year, Mullin offered an extensive critique of the tactics used by the police to defend the House chamber during the January 6 Capitol riot, in an interview with C-SPAN in which he said: “I’ve been in these situations before, similar, not exactly the same.”
When the interviewer responded to that statement by asking Mullin, “Can you explain, for those who don’t know, your background?” he replied: “I would prefer not to.”
Later in the same interview, Mullin recalled that he directed Jason Crow, a congressman from Colorado who is a former army ranger, in how to best evacuate sheltering lawmakers from the balcony.
Then, Mullin recalled, he visited a triage center, where wounded Capitol police officers were getting treated for their injuries. “I haven’t seen a thing like that since stuff you see overseas,” Mullin told C-SPAN.
Mullin has made similarly cryptic comments in other interviews. In 2023, he told a podcast produced by the Senate Republican conference: “I had to go do something overseas one time, there’s another side of my bio that I’ll never talk about nor will I, but I had to go do something overseas and when I went over there I always let my beard grow out. I’d start letting him grow before I went.
“When I do these trips, I always come back and shave my beard,” he added.
Mullin’s office, which previously avoided questions about what “overseas” work he was talking about in the C-SPAN interview, told the Washington Post this week that the senator, before entering Congress, did Christian “mission work” with US troops returning to the United States from overseas.
Mullin reportedly also visited Israel, in a guided tour for 40 lawmakers and their spouses in August 2015. There was no active warfare in Israel at that time, but another lawmaker’s wife, Kathleen Trott, later told Politico that Mullin had behaved badly on the trip.
“We get on this bus, and it’s a couple-hour bus ride and people were kind of leaning on their spouse’s shoulder and falling asleep. And this idiot 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,” Trott told the outlet in 2023.
“Some people were mad, and some people were laughing. There were a couple of women who were mad,” she added. “You’re trying to fall asleep, somebody you don’t know has his finger … it was just middle school. And we were in Israel, and we’re going to go see the Iron Dome and go to a kibbutz. Just didn’t seem appropriate.”
