A MAGA senator has got his words in a tangle on TV for the third day in a row.
Markwayne Mullin has endured a tough week, rolled out time and time again to face the cameras while President Donald Trump’s administration wages war on Iran. It has not gone well.
A member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, he has increasingly become one of the faces of the conflict, which saw the U.S. and Israel launch strikes on Tehran on Saturday, killing several Iranian succession candidates and sparking escalation across the Middle East.
What it isn’t, in the eye of U.S. law, is a war. On Tuesday, Mullin responded to reporters gathered at the U.S. Capitol, where he soon tripped himself up by calling it just that, despite it not having been declared so by Congress.
“This is war, and we’re taking out the threat,” he said when asked if more top Iranian officials were at risk from future strikes after the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “And if you’re part of the threat, then you’re a target.”
He later added it was “What we call not all the arrows, but going after the archers.”
Reporters leapt on his use of the word “war,” as question marks hang over the legal basis for the administration’s actions against Iran.
“We haven’t declared war,” Mullin rowed back when asked if he conceded it was. “They declared war on us, but we haven’t… We haven’t declared it.”
“They’ve called it war. What I’m saying —“
A reporter then informed him that he had said it was “war” just moments before.
“Okay, well, that was a misspoke,” Mullin, who has not served in the military, said. “What I was saying that they’ve declared war on us. But war is ugly. It always has been ugly. But we’re, you know, we’re taking out a regime that’s been trying to attack us for quite some time.”
Asked again if he conceded it was a war, he said, “We haven’t declared war. So if we haven’t declared war, then I don’t see that. The president hasn’t asked us to declare war yet, but they have declared war on us. We’re just simply fighting the threat that’s been at our door for 47 years. I’ve already answered the question.”
It rounds off a brutal period for Mullin. On Tuesday, the senator from Oklahoma appeared on Fox News, where he tried to lionize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warfighting experience, but accidentally went too far, twice calling him the president.
“And fortunately, you have President Hegseth—or I say President Hegseth—Secretary Hegseth, that has got a great relationship with President Trump, and President Hegseth’s been there,” he fumbled. “He’s done that.”
On Monday, he found himself in another mix-up, when he appeared on Fox Business to talk up the war, but forgot which nation the U.S. is claiming it’s liberating.
“It’s up to the Iraqi people or, I’m sorry, the Iranian people to choose their next go—their next leader,” he said. “It’s up to them to rise up and kick this regime out of place. If they do not, then they will be with a different leader, but the same regime.”
The death toll in Iran now stands at more than 700, while six U.S. servicemembers have also lost their lives.
But despite bearing some of the hallmarks of a war, Trump has described it only as “major combat operations,” while Congress has yet to pass any formal declaration.
Trump has the power to carry out limited military operations, but needs to inform Congress within 48 hours of doing so, while critics have questioned the legal basis for this week’s events.
While no plans for boots on the ground have been reported at the time of writing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday, “the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military,” adding that next steps “will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment over Mullin’s statement.
