The Risky Rise of Markwayne Mullin
On March 5, President Trump nominated Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to be his new Secretary of Homeland Security. DHS is the third-largest Cabinet department, with 260,000 employees across 22 different agencies from Coast Guard to Secret Service, to ICE and Border Patrol.
If you’re wondering what makes the plumber, rancher, and former MMA fighter qualified to lead our nation’s domestic security you need only to understand why the president believed the incumbent, Kristi Noem, was no longer qualified to serve him. Noem showed disloyalty to her boss. In contrast, Mullin incessantly shows fealty to Trump on Sunday morning politics shows and in impromptu media scrums at the Capitol.
Noem committed the cardinal sin for a Trump cabinet member; she blamed him for a scandal of her own doing. According to source’s on Capitol Hill, Trump was “livid” and “pissed” when Noem testified in a Senate hearing last Tuesday that Trump had approved a $220 million ad campaign featuring Noem and her leadership of DHS. The expenditure is the subject of a DHS Inspector General investigation with which Noem is reportedly not cooperating.
While talk of Noem’s ineptitude and her potentially short shelf life as a Cabinet member were increasing topics of discussion among lawmakers in both parties, her decision to throw Trump under the bus and potentially involve him in a pending investigation was the proverbial last straw.
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