Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin joins Morning Wire to discuss how President Trump swiftly secured his cabinet confirmations, setting a new precedent in political appointments and his legislative goals in the upcoming session. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
Chapter 1: How did Trump achieve rapid cabinet confirmations?
So far, President Trump is batting 1,000 on confirmations for his cabinet secretary nominees. Just this week, Kash Patel was confirmed as director of the FBI, while Labor Secretary Linda Chavez de Riemer seems to have secured the support of the Senate. This is the fastest pace since 2001.
In this episode, we sit down with Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen to discuss Trump's cabinet nominees, the Republicans' strategic approach to the confirmation process, and the significance of the GOP's big tent strategy. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, February 23rd, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
Chapter 2: Who is Kash Patel and why was he chosen to lead the FBI?
Joining us to discuss the rapid fire series of confirmations and where the Trump cabinet and agenda stands now is Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. Senator, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. It's my honor. Thanks for having me on. So let's start with Kash Patel. You've been a strong advocate for Patel.
Why do you believe we need somebody that's been called a quote unquote disruptor like him to lead the FBI?
You know, I wouldn't describe him as a disruptor. I would say he's someone that chases the facts and exposed the wrongs or the hypocrisy or the cover-ups that FBI was doing. He did this way before he was even being considered to be the director of FBI. He was a whistleblower before people were even looking into it. You take somebody like him who understands the intel system.
system understands the mission of the fbi and has been concerned about them concerned enough back years ago that he was willing to expose it why would you want somebody like that because he's he's not there to destroy the fbi he's there to get them back on mission focus he's there to support the field agents and put them back on mission focus of protecting the american people not
taking directive orders from a Democrat party that's wanting to investigate students for showing up to school board meetings or classifying Catholics, and I'm not joking when I say this, as a possible terrorist because they disagreed with the Democrat agenda, especially at this time when it came to abortions. That was what that was all about. It's concerning that they had weaponized, the
for political gain and political purposes. What Cash is going to do is put them back on mission focus. That means he's going to reform the seventh floor of the Hoover Building and take the politics out of it and put American people back in focus.
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Chapter 3: What role does GOP strategy play in Trump's cabinet success?
Thus far, all of President Trump's nominees have gotten through the confirmation process relatively smoothly. Is this simply due to GOP majorities, or do you believe that the Democrat opposition has been weakened by Trump's mandate?
I think you've got a little bit of both. I think the American people spoke very loud on November 5th when he won the popular vote and obviously electoral vote. I think the Democrat Party is trying to reorganize and find themselves and they can't. They keep reverting back to 2017 rhetoric. And I hope they stay there because they stay there. We're going to continue to win elections.
But at the same time, what you've seen is a new leader in the Senate with the leader Thune. He is just 100% grinding the Democrats down. From the get go, he said we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way, it's up to you.
And so once the president got confirmed and sworn into office on the 20th, what we did is we immediately started the clock on these nominees and these nominees haven't stopped. And what I mean by the clock Just explain to your listeners, after they get out of committee, which we already had people preset.
So first of all, Leader Thune directed the chairs of the committees to get started on the hearings early, even before Trump was sworn into office, which that normally doesn't take place. So he preset it. We came in on January 3rd.
president wasn't going to get sworn until january 20th but we already started hearing so we could get them reported out of committee onto the floor for the hearing so starting on january 20th he started the clock on these nominees once they get reported out of committee it's called a 24-hour soak and then if they're a cabinet position meaning that a secretary is a 30-hour debate.
So that's when we say we're invoking cloture. It's a 30-hour debate. So it's 54 hours on secretary levels. On directors like Kash Patel, when you invoke cloture on them, you have a two-hour debate. So while you still have a 24-hour soak, you only have two hours of debate on that person so you can move those faster. And he has literally kept that clock running 24-7, seven days a week.
Even when we're not here, the Democrats will negotiate and said, if you don't make us stay over on the weekend, we'll allow the clocks to run consecutively, even though we're not here. So we'll go ahead and invoke cloture on the next person. So when we get back here on Monday, we can confirm two people at once.
That's why we're so far ahead is because Leader Thune has not let up the pressure at all, not one bit on the Democrats.
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Chapter 4: How is Labor Secretary Lori Chavez de Riemer expected to influence labor relations?
How do you envision her impacting labor relations in the current political climate?
Well, you have to go back to the coalition that President Trump has built. So President Trump has brought a unique coalition together, right? Let's just look at Tulsi. That conversation started over two years ago between President Trump and I when he asked, how do I get libertarian and independents to vote for us? We don't have to win their vote, but we need to increase the percentages.
I said, let's bring Tulsi in. Immediately, that relationship started. Tulsi's relationship with Bobby is what brought Bobby onto the campaign. And the president, I mean, quickly embraced him. When he asked for me to be a surrogate to Indian country for him, even though a Republican hadn't won Indian country since Nixon, President Trump wanted to put a special interest towards them.
And so he ended up winning 63% of the Native American vote. When he asked, do you think we can win it? I said, sir, you win all 77 counties in Oklahoma. There's no greater population of Native American tribes in one area other than Oklahoma. And I said, so if you can win it in Oklahoma, you can win it nationally.
Chapter 5: What unique coalition has President Trump built?
When you start looking at the unions, he asked right after Sean O'Brien, who him and I had obviously public, very public disagreements. He asked us just a couple months later, hey, I need you guys to work together. And his phone call to me was, is, hey. listen, we need the union votes. I want you to make friends with Sean. I believe you guys will get along. I talked to him.
You guys actually have a lot in common. He asked Sean to do the same thing. We got in a room together and we've been friends ever since that day. And so the coalition that the president has brought together is unique. At the same time,
We have to understand that we can't always use this conservative purity test when the president has got a mandate from the American people that he's working for everybody. And that means this new coalition, we have to stay true to our values, but understand we're accepting individuals that we may not 100% agree to, but we got to show them some love. And Lori represents that.
We have our differences. Obviously, we're a right to work state. I'm a very proud right to work state. That's what started the whole confrontation honestly, between Sean and I. But at the same time, the unions have a place in this country, and I recognize that.
There's not a successful business that doesn't have successful employees, and there's not an employee that has a good job that doesn't have a business to work for, so they take both of us. Lurie was a great compromise. It was one of those areas that, yeah, we're gonna give the unions a nod. We want 59% of the union vote, which he's the first Republican president to do that in decades.
We're going to give you a little nod, agree that we disagree on some issues, but we're going to find common ground to work for because they're looking for a party right now. The Democrat woke agenda doesn't fit the workforce that we have in America right now. And so Sean and I spoke. Sean actually brought Lori to me. And said, what do you think about Lori?
I think this is someone that the unions can support. And I said, I think that's a great idea. Let's talk to the president about it. So we both visited with the president at different times about it. The president loved the idea, and that's how it happened. And so I get some of my conservative friends out there had reservation about it.
But if we want to continue to win elections for the Republican Party and not go down this path, socialist woke agenda that the Biden administration was trying to move us towards, then we got to understand we're going to have to allow some people in our party that we can welcome in and start working on things we have in common, not just focus on the differences.
Well, that Big Ten approach clearly paid dividends in this last election for Trump, winning percentages of demographics. We haven't seen Republicans win in decades, as you said.
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