Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) has cultivated an image as a Rambo-type hero, which was burnished in August 2021 when he took an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan to try to help rescue people fleeing the Taliban after they returned to power in Afghanistan.
A former mixed martial arts fighter and wrestler who champions the Trump administration’s trillion-dollar-plus military budget, Mullin is a super-hawk sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee who criticized President Joe Biden for supposedly “appeasing” countries like Iran.
In 2022, Mullin introduced a bill in Congress that would allow U.S. citizens to volunteer to fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine, claiming that thousands of Americans were ready to fight communism. (Lacking even a bachelor’s degree, Mullin does not seem to realize that Russia under Vladimir Putin is not a communist country.)[1]
While Mullin may genuinely subscribe to reactionary political views,[2] his opportunism was disclosed in an article in The Oklahoman in late January, which revealed that he had bought Chevron and RTX (formerly Raytheon) stock just days before U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an illegal Special Forces raid, Operation Absolute Resolve.
A spokesperson for Mullin told The Oklahoman that the purchases were made without Mullin’s input by a firm that manages his stock trading. This excuse seems to be disingenuous since Mullin had to have green-lighted the stock trades and did not demand their cancelation or say that he sold back the RTX and Chevron stock shares after they were disclosed.
Hellbound and Down 