ESPN journalist Pablo Torre along with political commentator Tim Miller and comedian Wyatt Cenac, recently took a long, hard look at the man tapped to replace Kristi Noem as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security: Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
The conversation began with a clip that introduced Mullin in a way no press release ever could. During a Senate hearing, Mullin turned to the head of the Teamsters union and said, “Sir, this is a time. This is a place. If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”
The exchange escalated until Senator Bernie Sanders intervened and brought the confrontation to a close. As Cenac observed, “If you were really about it, you would have hopped over that table and you’d have gone and made a fool out of yourself on national television, but you got sat down by Bernie Sanders.”
Mullin’s MMA career became a central point of scrutiny. Torre noted that Mullin markets himself as an undefeated athlete with a record listed as either 3-0 or 5-0, depending on the source.
Miller offered necessary context: the matches took place in a semi-professional league called XFN, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One of Mullin’s opponents went by the name Huggy Bear and was a teenager at the time, while Mullin was in his late 20s.
Miller compared the whole résumé to “somebody playing in the company softball league, winning three championships, and then running for the Senate and being like, I’m the first senator who was a softball champion.”
The panel also raised questions about Mullin’s repeated suggestions that he has firsthand knowledge of war and its realities, a claim that Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan and actual military veterans have taken issue with publicly.
Miller said that Mullin “likes to just sort of play cute with talking about being in war” and that veterans grew annoyed watching him imply combat experience he does not have.
Torre connected these to a broader moment. With the announcement that the president’s birthday celebration would include a UFC event organized by Dana White, Torre called it straightforwardly what it is: “It’s idiocracy. Mike Judge did have a crystal ball.”
Miller agreed, noting that MMA culture has become deeply embedded in the current administration’s identity, with officials appearing ringside at matches as a way to project toughness.
The concern, Miller argued, is not simply cosmetic. The Department of Homeland Security oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the TSA.
Putting someone who, in Miller’s words, “likes to play pretend violence” at the top of that structure carries real consequences for the people those agencies encounter every day. As Torre put it, the playing pretend “does matter in this case.”
