A day after trying to start a fistfight in a Senate committee hearing, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said Wednesday that he has no problem biting people if he gets into a brawl.
“By the way, I’m not afraid of biting,” Mullin declared in an interview with Oklahoma native Kyle Thompson on his podcast “Undaunted.Life.”
“Biting?” Thompson asked.
“I’ll bite 100%,” replied the U.S. senator. “In a fight, I’m going to bite. I’ll do anything. I’m not above it. And I don’t care where I bite, by the way.”
“I’m not even going to ask any further questions on that,” replied Thompson, whose podcast has the stated mission of being “specifically designed for the rugged Christian looking for ways to more closely follow after Christ and improve as a man.”
Here’s a clip of their exchange:
Mullin’s comments about sinking his teeth into human flesh came after he tried to physically fight Sean O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in a Senate hearing on Tuesday. O’Brien was a committee witness and testified about standing up to corporate greed.
The Oklahoma Republican was upset about O’Brien’s previous mean tweets about him on X, formerly Twitter. So he challenged him to a fight in the hearing to prove who the tougher guy was outside of social media.
“Stand your butt up,” demanded the senator.
“You stand your butt up, big guy,” O’Brien shot back.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the committee chairman, had to repeatedly intervene.
“Sit down! Sit down!” he shouted at Mullin at one point, hitting his gavel. “You’re a United States senator!”
The Republican senator later told HuffPost’s Igor Bobic that he was only joking about biting people, even though nobody else seemed to be in on his joke.
Mullin is a former MMA fighter. But biting is completely banned in the sport.
A Mullin spokeswoman did not respond to a request to comment on why a U.S. senator is talking about biting people and if there are any places where he would not bite a person.