GOP Leader Dismisses Rand Paul’s Scathing Mullin Takedown on Fox News: ‘These Two Have Some Personal History’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) dismissed Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) concerns about Senator and DHS nominee Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on Wednesday, hours after the two clashed during a tense confirmation hearing.

During an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, Thune was asked about the hearing earlier in the day and the “heated” exchanges between Paul and Thune.

Paul brought up past comments Mullin made making light of an assault against Paul. The Kentucky senator also brought up other examples to argue his point that Mullin has anger issues. Mullin is President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Kristi Noem as the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Thune threw his support behind Mullin and dismissed Paul’s concerns as coming from the personal history the pair have. Thune said the Senate could vote to confirm Mullin as soon as next week after a committee vote tomorrow.

The Senate leader said:

Well, as I described it earlier, Martha, these two have some personal history, which they are going to have to figure out how to work through but the issue here is the job. It’s an important job, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. That position is vacant right now needs to be filled. Markwayne Mullin has a lot of support. Any of us who have worked with him are very confident that he will do a terrific job over there so we want to move the process along, obviously. The confirmation hearing was held earlier today and some of those differences that they had were litigated at that hearing but at the end of the day it’s about ensuring that we have the right person in the job and this is a really important job and we think that Markwayne Mullin is the right person for it.

Paul also joined Fox News on Wednesday after the hearing.

“I think his anger issues that he has as an individual, and his celebration of the violence that happened to me, but also his justification of the violence when he’s, you know, engaged in-, he was ready to have a fistfight in a committee,” the senator said. “When they asked him, after he had cooled off days later, you know, would he reject any of that? Does he regret any of it? And he said, no, he had no regrets.”

Watch above via Fox News.

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