GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin Defends Fight With Teamsters President, Says He’s ‘Not Afraid Of Biting’ People

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) said that Oklahomans “would be pretty upset” if he had not stood up to Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Mullin and O’Brien went back and forth at each other amid a conversation about labor unions and even threatened a fight, with Mullin standing up from his chair before Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) stopped him.

Mullin defended his actions during an interview with Sean Hannity later that day.

“He called you out,” Hannity said to Mullin. “You called him out for calling you out. And that’s kind of old school, the way it used to be.”

When asked if his conduct aligned with what is expected of a U.S. senator, Mullin responded that he is “a guy from Oklahoma first.”

“In Oklahoma, you don’t do this,” he said of O’Brien’s social media post from June, in which he challenged Mullin to a fight. “Maybe run your mouth in New Jersey, I don’t know… I’m sure not going to sit back and let somebody do that and not call them out on it.”

“What did people want me to do?” he said about the tussle on the Senate floor. “If I didn’t do that, people in Oklahoma would be pretty upset at me. That’s how we were raised, I’m supposed to represent Oklahoma values.”

In another interview with Fox Business hosts Sean Duffy and Dagen McDowell, Mullin referenced the duel that former President Andrew Jackson challenged nine people to, recalling that he “knocked one guy out at a White House dinner.”

“Maybe if we have some type of respect because we know there’s going to be consequences for your actions, then maybe we can move on with all this, I don’t know, jargon that happens around this place.”

Mullin went even further on Kyle Thompson‘s podcast Undaunted.Life: “By the way, I’m not afraid of biting.”