The Risky Rise of Markwayne Mullin

The former MMA fighter and business owner lacks a background in law enforcement, the military, or cybersecurity. Trump appointed him Homeland Security Secretary anyway.

Frank Figliuzzi is an FBI Assistant Director (retired); 25-year veteran Special Agent; and author of the national bestseller, The FBI Way, and Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers. Subscribe to his Substack.

Illustration by Riley Levine

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.

In an interview with Reuters, Trump denied signing off on the gargantuan advertising budget and stated, he “never knew anything about it”. In a telling remark indicative of just how far Noem had gotten under Trump’s skin, the president complained, “I spent less money than that to become president.” Whether Trump did or did not approve the self-serving Noem commercials didn’t matter – Noem’s fate was sealed.