NO LAUGHING MATTER

GOP Senator Says Video About Killing Reporter Was a ‘Joke’

Markwayne Mullin downplayed comments suggesting lawmakers can shoot journalists over disagreements.

Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin tried to take back his suggestion that politicians can “handle our differences,” with journalists by resorting to shooting and killing one another. Now the staunch Trump loyalist and former mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter claims he was just joking. In a video of himself posted to X on Saturday, Mullin stands in a stairway in the U.S. Capitol building and narrates the story of a newspaper columnist, Charles Kincaid, who killed a politician in 1890. At the time, the congressional reporter shot and killed the former Kentucky congressman William Taulbee amidst their ongoing feud. “There’s a lot we could say about reporters and the stories they write, but I bet they would write a lot less false stories±as President Trump says, fake news—if we could still handle our differences that way,” Mullin concluded at the end of the two-minute clip. After his remarks were published by The Oklahoman on Sunday, the GOP senator tried to downplay them in a second tweet. He posted an election map of Oklahoma showing every red county and wrote: “Don’t forget I also JOKED about bringing back caning to settle political disputes.”