Markwayne Mullin grabbed his pink stress ball for the second time in a week in a video where he desperately tried to placate his furious MAGA base.
Mullin, 48, took over the Department of Homeland Security in March after Trump fired Kristi Noem, vowing to keep his sprawling agency out of the headlines. That promise is not aging well.
The former MMA fighter and boss of his family plumbing business lit the fuse Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, when host Jake Tapper pressed him on whether the roughly 350,000 people holding Temporary Protected Status would be deported from the United States.
Mullin’s answer—that they could apply for permanent residence or a visa, or take a plane ticket home plus a stipend—enraged the right, so he grabbed his comfort toy and hit the record button.
In the clip, which he posted on his official social media accounts, the DHS chief can be seen clasping the pink ball between the fingers of his right hand as he spelled out the choice facing TPS holders.
“Temporary meant temporary,” he says, before laying out two roads: self-deport for a $2,600 stipend and a plane ticket, or “we’ll come find you.” His pitch was, “If you think you’re going to just wait out the Trump administration, it’s not going to work.”
The backdrop to all this is the Supreme Court, which on June 25 handed Trump a thumping victory. By a 6-3 vote along ideological lines in Mullin v. Doe, the justices cleared the way for the administration to end TPS for nationals of Haiti and Syria. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito ruled that the law shields the homeland security secretary’s call from court review.
The decision strips protections from around 330,000 people, the majority of them Haitian. Their work permits are set to lapse on July 1. Critics say they could be sent back to a country the State Department itself warns Americans not to visit, where more than 2,300 people have been killed in gang attacks this year.
One of the lawyers who fought the case did not mince his words. “Many, many people are going to die violent, needless deaths,” attorney Geoffrey Pipoly told CNN. In a blistering dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the evidence of racial motive was “plain to see in the president’s own statements,” as NPR reported.
A win this big could have bought Mullin some goodwill on his own side—but his comments on it had the opposite effect. When he told Tapper that TPS holders had “a couple choices”—including applying for permanent residence or a visa—the base took it to mean an offer of amnesty.
As the Daily Beast reported Monday, Fox News veteran Laura Ingraham fired first, telling her millions of followers that permanent status is “not what the base wants.” Florida Republican Anthony Sabatini branded it an “absolute betrayal of the Republican base.” Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino warned: “Deliver the promise or lose the House.”
Cue Mullin’s desperate damage control. “Let me be ABUNDANTLY clear,” Mullin posted on X hours after the CNN sit-down. “Temporary Protected Status is just that: TEMPORARY.” He accused Democrats of trying to make TPS “a de facto amnesty program.”
Then came the video—and the pink ball, an accessory Mullin has been spotted with before in another high-pressure moment. As the Beast reported last Friday, he was filmed squeezing the same toy during a fiery House Appropriations hearing a day earlier, in which he snapped at 83-year-old Democrat Rosa DeLauro: “Don’t be a hypocrite.”
Mullin has said he has carried the ball since middle school and once called it his “pacifier,” USA Today reported. DHS has described it as a “fidget tool” that gets his “motor” going.
The Daily Beast asked the Department of Homeland Security why Mullin appeared unable to cope with stressful public appearances without his pacifier. They did not immediately reply.
According to anger-management specialists cited by the Beast, stress balls work best when “irritation is beginning, not when anger becomes intense.”
Mullin may need a bigger ball.
