On Sunday morning, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a prominent White House ally and surrogate, appeared on Fox News and told viewers, “We are not at war with Iran.” Donald Trump suggested the opposite a day earlier, but the senator delivered his message with emphasis anyway.
On Monday afternoon, however, Mullin seemed to change his mind. While defending the administration’s military offensive in Iran, the Oklahoman told Fox News: “War is ugly. It smells bad. And if anybody’s ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happened around you and taste it and fill it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget.”
This was problematic for a variety of reasons, including the inconvenient fact that Mullin never served in the military and has no idea what war smells like, as actual veterans were quick to note. Nevertheless, the senator at least seemed to acknowledge at the time that the United States is at war, despite what he said a day earlier.
Roughly three hours later, however, Mullin reversed course again, telling CNN that the war in Iran “isn’t a war.” Reminded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it a war earlier in the day, the senator shrugged it off and stuck to his position.
A day later, while talking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Mullin called the crisis in Iran a “war.” He then argued that it wasn’t a war, and when he was reminded of what he’d said moments earlier, he said: “That was a misspoke.”
So to recap, over the course of roughly two days, the junior senator from Oklahoma changed his mind about the nature of the U.S. operations in Iran four times.
Mullin also recently appeared to confuse Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei, before arguing than Iran “was more Westernized than the United States” ahead of the 1979 revolution. For good measure, it’s also probably worth noting that the GOP lawmaker has also referred to Hegseth as the president and accidentally referred to Iran as Iraq more than once.
There are 53 Republican senators and 218 GOP members in the House, giving the party all kinds of options for surrogates and spokespersons. Perhaps pushing Mullin in front of cameras and microphones isn’t their best bet?
