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Tag: markwayne mullin
Matt Gaetz

Markwayne Mullin Slaps Back After Matt Gaetz Says His Stock Trades Are 'Corrupt'

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) are having a public back-and-forth on social media after the latter accused his fellow Republican of corruption.

On Wednesday, Gaetz posted a graphic to X (formerly Twitter) showing that Mullin's wealth had increased from $12 million, when he was a member of the House of Representatives, to $63 million in 2022 after several years in the US Senate. Gaetz tweeted the graphic with the words "we should pass a ban on trading stocks!"

Mullin didn't take kindly to Gaetz's post, and attacked the Florida congressman's "criticism of hard-earned success," adding that "he should try building a business that gains value" and that doing so is "more gratifying than living off your daddy’s money."

Gaetz, for his part, shot back at Mullin, tweeting that the only thing he criticized was Mullin's stock trades as a member of Congress.

"I want to ban those trades," Gaetz posted. "You cashed in and made millions."

Mullin's point about Gaetz's wealth is true: The far-right Florida congressman comes from an incredibly wealthy family, with Forbes estimating his father and mother's net worth at approximately $30 million as of June 2020. Gaetz's father, Don, is a former hospital executive who oversaw facilities in Florida and Wisconsin, and who eventually founded hospice provider Vitas Healthcare. Don and Victoria Gaetz now own multiple seven-figure stakes in various companies, 13 pieces of real estate and have a large and diverse stock portfolio.

However, Mullin is also a beneficiary of family wealth. According to a 2012 Roll Call profile of Mullin, the Oklahoma congressman admitted to inheriting his father's plumbing company, which he then built up over the years. Mullin — a mixed martial arts (MMA) enthusiast — has also founded an MMA gym called "Oklahoma Fight Club." Mullin's penchant for fisticuffs was on full display during a Senate committee hearing in November, when he challenged International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to a fight before being deterred by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Markwayne Mullin

GOP Senator Challenges Teamster Leader To Fistfight -- During Senate Hearing (VIDEO)

On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) chaired a Senate committee hearing titled “Standing Up Against Corporate Greed: How Unions are Improving the Lives of Working Families.” Labor representatives gave testimony, including Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien.

At the hearing, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a multimillionaire former business owner, tried to pick a fight with O’Brien. No, not a figurative fight—a literal fight. Instead of using the committee’s time to help improve workers’ lives, Mullin read tweets O’Brien wrote about the senator and then challenged the Teamsters president to fight him right there in the committee hearing room.

It was ridiculous. After Mullin stood up—yes, he stood up—Sanders told him, “Sit down! No, you’re a United States senator,” while O’Brien called Mullin a “clown” and wondered out loud if this was how the senator from Oklahoma dealt with every disagreement. During the exchange, the teamsters sitting behind O’Brien laughed at Mullin’s ludicrous bit of political theater.

The exchange went on with Mullin still trying to turn his time into a fight promo (you can watch at the link below), and O’Brien reminding Mullin that he had the opportunity to be one of the most “influential people in the country but you’re focused on debate that isn’t even relevant. You’re an embarrassment. An embarrassment.” The truth clearly continues to hurt Mullin.

The bad blood goes back to March, when the two men got into a heated argument during another Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing. O’Brien called out Mullin’s anti-labor “tough guy” schtick and the two exchanged barbs. Mullin came out looking pretty pathetic. O’Brien continued besmirching Mullin’s not-great name on social media, and in June, Mullin challenged O’Brien to a MMA-style fight for charity.

Mullin’s “self-made” business was originally his father’s, which he took over when his father got ill. Still, there are many questions about how he got so gosh-darned rich, as The New Republic reported earlier this year:

Mullin himself warrants his own level of scrutiny as to whether he is an “honest” millionaire. The Oklahoma Republican was already swimming in assets worth up to $29.9 million in 2020. The following year, his net worthexploded to be anywhere between $31.6 million and a gargantuan $75.6 million. Mullin received some $1.4 million in federal PPP loans and was among the members of Congress who helped tank the TRUTH Act, which would have required public disclosure of companies receiving those relief funds.

Pathetic.

And there’s always a tweet with guys like this.

You can watch the rest of the exchange here, at around the 1:41:00 mark.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

McCarthy Calls Biden ‘Soft On Russia,’ Then Deletes Tweet

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday blamed President Joe Biden for recent ransomware attacks originating in Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union against businesses and organizations around the world, accusing the Biden administration of being "soft on Russia."

McCarthy's comment, in a tweet that was then deleted but was captured by ProPublica's Politwoops site, comes after years of accepting former President Donald Trump's cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"The Biden admin has been soft on Russia since Day 1," McCarthy (R-CA) tweeted. "The President never should have signaled to Putin that hacking against America is acceptable under ANY circumstance." He deleted the tweet 20 minutes later, without explanation.

Following the June 17 summit meeting between Biden and Putin, McCarthy said in a statement, "President Biden should have used today's summit to stand up for our national interests and send a message to the world that the United States will hold Russia accountable for its long list of transgressions. Unfortunately, President Biden gave Vladimir Putin a pass."

By contrast, McCarthy never publicly criticized Trump's support and open admiration for Putin. While the Washington Postreported in 2017 that the GOP leader had told colleagues privately the previous year, "There's two people I think Putin pays: [then-Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump," he later claimed, "It's a bad attempt at a joke; that's all there is to it. No one believes it to be true from any stretch of fact."

In response to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russian, McCarthy dismissed the allegations with the repeated phrase "nothing there."

Two other members of his caucus also defended Trump's handling of Putin but are now criticizing Biden's.

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona cheered Trump's 2018 summit with Putin as "a good first step toward normal, diplomatic relations" in a USA Today op-ed.

"Joe Biden talks a tough game on Russia only to sit back as they hurl cyber-attacks at us," he tweeted on Tuesday. "Putin is eating our lunch."

Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin excused Trump's public defense of Putin at the 2018 summit, instead scolding journalists for being "extremely unprofessional" by asking Trump if he believed Putin's denials of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. "The intent of it wasn't fact-finding, it was a 'gotcha' question — and not one that should ever have been asked in that setting," Mullin tweeted.

On Wednesday, he tweeted that a ransomware attack against the software company Kaseya was "a direct result of President Biden failing to hold Russia accountable."

This is not the first time pro-Trump lawmakers have tried to frame Biden as weak on Russia.

In May, after Biden approved a request from the German government to waive sanctions against a business building an oil pipeline between Russia and Germany, House Republicans suggested he must be "a Russian asset" or that Putin must "have" something on him.

The recent Republican criticisms come after a growing number of cyberattacks have been launched, seemingly by Russians hackers, against businesses across the globe. A similar attack on an oil and gas pipeline in May slowed fossil fuel deliveries along the East Coast for several days.

In June, Biden expressly told Putin to stop the hacking.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki warned, "If the Russian government cannot or will not take action against criminal actors residing in Russia, we will take action or reserve the right to take action on our own."

Biden's public criticism of the Russian regime has been a sharp shift from his predecessor's approach.

Trump repeatedly said that getting along with Russia would be a "good" thing.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump openly sought help from Putin with opposition research against Hillary Clinton. "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," he said at a July press conference.

Weeks earlier, high-ranking Trump campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr., had met with Russia officials who offered dirt on Clinton, his Democratic opponent.

After Russia's efforts to help Trump win came to light, he repeatedly defended Putin, falsely saying that Putin did not meddle on his behalf and dismissing the unanimous findings of his own intelligence agencies.

In a February 2017 Fox News appearance, Trump was asked why he respected a known "killer" like Putin. Trump responded, "There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?"

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

Everything Republicans Oppose, They Now Call ’Socialist’

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Republicans have devised a new definition for the term socialism: anything we don't support.

According to Merriam-Webster, socialism is defined principally as "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."

But congressional Republicans accused their Democratic colleagues and President Joe Biden this week of being socialists for considering reforms to the Supreme Court.

"Biden is dead set on packing the Supreme Court with activist justices who will rubber stamp the Socialists' anti-America agenda," tweeted Rep Mo. Brooks of Alabama on Wednesday. Biden has not endorsed any changes to the court, but signed an executive order on April 9 to create a commission to study various proposals for reforming it.

After a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted, "Democrats want to add 4 new justices to the Supreme Court of their choosing to force their socialist agenda on the American people. They would rather dismantle this nation than dignify the Constitution. It should scare every single American."

"Packing courts is a play right out of the socialist handbook," charged New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. "Hugo Chavez packed Venezuela's Court from 20 to 32 judges to tilt 45,000 rulings in his favor and destroy a nation. We can not and will not allow it here."

In a Fox News appearance on Friday, Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin made a similar argument. "This is exactly what socialists do. We see this over and over again, when they try to take over a country — they, once they get in power, they try to take over the courts."

National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Emmer said in February that this is his party's playbook for the 2022 elections: repeatedly accuse Democrats of being socialists who want to kill jobs.

Although Biden has expressly said he is not a socialist and very few congressional Democrats have actually endorsed socialism, Republicans have simply continued applying the terms to everything they oppose.

Brooks has said that temporarily letting members of the House work remotelyduring the pandemic, making sure the votes of Black Americans aren't suppressed, and offering legal protections for undocumented people brought to the United States by their families as kids are all socialism.

He, Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert each argued that gun safety laws, such as universal background checks, amount to socialism.

Mullin said in February that a $15-an-hour minimum wage was a "socialist" plot to "add $54B to the deficit and devastate small businesses recovering from the pandemic."

New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who cosponsored the For the People Act in the last Congress, decried the pro-democracy and voting rights legislation in March as ""socialism ... served on a platter."

Numerous GOP lawmakers also attacked Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for pandemic relief as a socialist wish list and are now attempting defeat his $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan with the same bogus claim. Georgia Rep. Rick Allen tweeted on April 5 that the "'infrastructure' plan is just a Trojan horse to advance socialist Green New Deal priorities."

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, "72+ radical Socialists introduced a resolution to EXPEL me from Congress" over her calls for violence against Democratic lawmakers and her record of racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic attacks.

Donald Trump and his allies used similar attacks during his unsuccessful campaign for reelection in 2020.

These latest attacks come as Republicans have grown increasingly frustrated at their inability to make Biden and policy proposals unpopular with the public.

"Biden is a horrible villain for us," one Senate staffer told Politico this week, lamenting the GOP's inability to turn people against him.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.