Democrats bungled their chances to disseminate Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s (R-OK) record in Congress, instead opting to turn the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary nominee’s confirmation hearing into a debate with Republicans over the agency’s ongoing shutdown, the 2020 election, and the legitimacy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On Wednesday, as Mullin fielded attacks from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Senate Democrats pressed him on the 2020 election, whether he had traveled overseas while in Congress, and statements made by President Donald Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, among other things.
In one bizarre line of questioning, for instance, once-rising Democrat star Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who delivered the response address to Trump’s address to Congress last year, claimed that the president is preventing the United States from free and fair elections and suggested he would “try and steal” another election in the future.
“I would just say that if we ever get to the point where you are being asked to put armed ICE officers at polling locations, we have lost the plot as a country,” Slotkin told Mullin after questioning him about the 2020 election:
We have fundamentally lost it. And until I hear someone tell me that this man, President Trump, will actually allow us to have a free and fair election, there is zero trust here, and I cannot trust that he won’t try and steal it again. [Emphasis added]
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) similarly brought up the 2020 election to Mullin.
Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked Mullin a series of questions about White House senior advisor Stephen Miller, to which the nominee repeatedly told the senator that he ought to ask his questions to Miller, not him.
“Stephen Miller also said, again on Fox News, ‘Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day.’ If you’re confirmed, are you going to be directing ICE to arrest 3,000 people a day?” Blumenthal asked Mullin.
“Sir, once again, I can’t speak for Stephen Miller. But I can say that the president has tapped me to be the secretary of Homeland [Security] and I will lead that department, and I’ll lead it …” Mullin responded, before Blumenthal interrupted to ask if he would follow the quota mentioned by Miller.
“No quota has been set for me, sir,” Mullin said.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) took the second half of the hearing into a debate over the ongoing DHS shutdown and said Republicans are using “political theatre” when talking about the issue.
“We heard a lot of theatre, all this stuff,” Peters said of Republicans discussing the shutdown. “… Republicans are going to hold TSA hostage, they’re going to hold the Coast Guard hostage, they’re going to hold FEMA and CISA, they’re going to hold it all hostage because they don’t want to give any ground on making sure we just have common sense guidelines,” Peters said.
Peters then got into a back-and-forth with Mullin over the nominee’s travels to Afghanistan following the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops, as well as international travel that Mullin took as a member of Congress that remains classified.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) similarly discussed the DHS shutdown and went into a diatribe about the need to reform ICE, accusing agents of assaulting and killing innocent Americans “while wearing masks, seemingly without accountability.”
The hearing rounded out with Sen. Rand Paul raising the issue of Mullin’s classified travel while in Congress and asking him to discuss such travel in a classified setting to which the nominee agreed.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected].
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