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Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, March 17th. Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that, like Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, wants to know, which president was President Donald Trump allegedly speaking to about Iran? 

[clip of Peter Doocy] I just want to ask you about something very interesting that you’ve said twice today. That you talked to another former president. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Yeah. 

[clip of Peter Doocy] About the Iran strikes. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I did. 

[clip of Peter Doocy] Was it George W. Bush? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] No. 

[clip of Peter Doocy] Was it Bill Clinton? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I don’t want to say. I don’t want to say, because– 

[clip of Peter Doocy] Barack Obama? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] A member of a party, a member of a party–

[clip of Peter Doocy] Joe Biden? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] They have Trump Derangement Syndrome, oh, but it’s somebody that happens to like me and I like that person who’s a smart person. 

Jane Coaston: The funniest possibility? Definitely former president Joe Biden. [music break] On today’s show, FBI Director Kash Patel takes a break from chugging beer to testify before Congress about global security threats, something he’s definitely monitoring closely. And Trump insists the war with Iran will wrap up soon, even though his definition of soon remains unclear. But let’s start with the Department of Homeland Security. Sure, DHS is still knee-deep in a partial shutdown and will be for the foreseeable future. But with the ignominious dismissal of Kristi Noem, the Senate will be taking up the nomination of her replacement this week, Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin. I’ll say this for Markwayne Mullin, he has not, as far as I know, spent more than $200 million on an ad campaign for a federal agency that prominently features himself. But in some ways, he’s not very different from the woman President Trump wants him to replace. For example, remember how Noem accused Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the two American citizens shot and killed by immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year, of being engaged in quote, “domestic terrorism”? So did Markwayne Mullin, multiple times on multiple television networks. Here are some moments from the Bulwark’s compilation of remarks Mullin made about Renee Good’s killing in early January. 

[clip of Markwayne Mullin] When Kristi Noem said this is a form of domestic terrorism, it is. They’re terrorizing their city right now. They at the time when she said that, they were breaking out windows of cop cars. They were terrorizing the town. That is a form of domestic terrorism. What she said was absolutely 100 percent correct. 

Jane Coaston: And here are Mullin’s comments regarding Alex Pretti’s killing later that month. 

[clip of Markwayne Mullin] Unfortunately, a an individual a deranged individual that came in to have to cause max damage with a loaded pistol, with an extra mag that was completely loaded, was shot and killed. How much more does this got to go on before they the Democrat leaders there take responsibility for their words? 

Jane Coaston: In case you wondered, Markwayne Mullin is very pro-Trump. He endorses the president’s debunked theory that the 2020 election was stolen. It wasn’t. And he threatened to fight the head of the Teamsters Union back in 2023 during a Senate committee hearing because the Teamster’s Union head was mean to him on Twitter. I am, sadly, not joking. So to talk more about Markwayne Mullin, the DHS shutdown, and some of the things happening on the Hill this week, I spoke with Burgess Everett. He’s a congressional bureau chief for Semafor. Burgess, welcome back to What a Day. 

Burgess Everett: Hey, Jane, thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: Earlier this month, Trump announced his pick to take over DHS from Kristi Noem, Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin. He’s not a major name. The average person may just know that this person has two first names in one, even if they watch the news. So so what do we know about Markwayne Mullin? How did he get into politics? 

Burgess Everett: You know, the interesting thing is he’s really well-known in the Capitol building that I’m in right now. And he’s kind of viewed as like a little bit of a fixer between the House and the Senate and the president. First, he was in the House. I believe he was elected in 2012. I first actually met him in a very strange manner. He was campaigning for this guy called the Kissing Congressman, this congressman from Louisiana who kissed his staffer back in 2014. And I went down to cover his campaign. And Markwayne Mullin was there, he’d driven down from Oklahoma to help Vance McAllister win re-election. He did not win, but it left a big impression on me. And I think it’s left an impression on a lot of people because he, I believe he doesn’t have a traditional bachelor’s degree, so he’s kind of like got this working class thing going on. He bounces a rubber ball everywhere he goes. It’s sort of like a release of his energy or something like that. Like you can literally hear him come down the halls of the Capitol by listening for a rubber ball bouncing. So he’s kind of a unique figure and I wouldn’t say weird because he’s very personable, but he’s just like not your average congressman. He’s challenged people to fight in committee hearings. He’s super jacked. He’ll wear a cowboy hat on the Senate floor because it’s technically not against the rules. So he is a very big character and a big personality. And I don’t know how much that’ll translate to his new job when he, and if he is confirmed. But he’s very different than Kristi Noem, a lot more charismatic and has a lot more relationships within the party. 

Jane Coaston: Less hair also. How did he become this under-the-radar leader in Washington? How did that happen? 

Burgess Everett: I would say like he was pretty close to Kevin McCarthy, the previous speaker, and that was what began the sort of like back-channeling because of there was like a lot of drama between the House and Senate Republicans, as there always is, but there was a lot of drama um after the 2022 elections when Senate Republicans failed to capture the majority and House Republicans won the majority, and he was trying to help everybody triangulate that, all those big debates on Ukraine aid. The border deal that failed in the Senate, those sorts of things. So that’s kind of where he emerged from and he didn’t have a committee chairmanship. You know he was still in his first term as Senator. He’s only been in Senate for a little bit over three years. So he’s quite junior. So it’s been kind of remarkable to see him kind of rise in prominence in the Capitol, but not necessarily outside of it. Cause as you referenced, I think most Americans don’t really know who this guy is. And that may be good for the Department of Homeland Security, actually. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, when you heard the news that Trump had tapped Mullin to lead DHS, were you surprised and why do you think Trump picked him? 

Burgess Everett: I was definitely surprised. Um. I think he picked Mullin for two reasons. One is a fresh start over. You can see Kristi Noem’s gone by the end of the month. Bovino is going to be out too, soon. These were kind of the two biggest faces of the failures, I would say, in Minnesota, where federal agents ended up killing two people. But the other thing is, Kristi Noem had infuriated Republicans by being slow to reimburse their states for disaster relief. The type of things that happens on a routine basis under most administrations. She was ticking them off on, Ted Budd, who I bet most of your listeners don’t even know who he is. He’s a Senator from North Carolina. He is so low key. It’s hard to overstate that. I mean, he’s a very quiet, genteel guy. He put a hold on all of Kristi Noem’s nominees because she wouldn’t approve disaster aid for Western North Carolina from a hurricane years ago now at this point. So there were these bridges that had been burnt and Markwayne Mullin is not going to do that. He’s going to be responsive to these folks. He’s not going to have these arbitrary rules on $100,000 and overspending needs to be stamped by the Homeland Security Secretary, which is what Kristi Noem did. So I think he’s got these conduits to important Republicans and some Democrats, maybe we’ll see, that can kind of give them a better relationship with Congress, which had gotten really poor recently. And you could see that the way that Kristi Noem got fileted in those committee hearings a couple weeks ago. 

Jane Coaston: So keeping all of this in mind, what can we expect from Mullin’s Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, besides the fact that he and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul hate each other and Rand Paul is overseeing the hearing? 

Burgess Everett: Man, you just scooped me, Jane. That was going to be one of my big things to watch. No uh, I think to me, you’re probably going to get Democrats really prying at which policy changes he would want to do compared to Kristi Noem, and my guess is he’s going to be pretty non-committal, and that’s in part because I don’t know that they know what they’re going to do. The department he’s seeking the lead has been shut down for a month. This is all over immigration enforcement and Democrats are going to want to ask him, how are you going to change the way you enforce immigration law? And I don’t expect a ton of details from him on that, but that is gonna be like the main contention from the minority. I expect Republicans minus Rand Paul, maybe to be super easy on him. I would not expect a ton of probing questions from them. They want him in this job ASAP. They want them to be confirmed by the end of the month. And so I think they’re gonna do everything they can. 

Jane Coaston: And can you just remind me what exactly is the drama between him and Rand Paul? 

Burgess Everett: Well, if your job is to round up as many votes as possible and make these two bodies of Congress in sync with the White House, and one person has been voting repeatedly against Trump, which is Rand Paul, I think that’s kind of what irked Markwayne Mullin and kind of led to that rift. I don’t know that we’ll see that come out later this week, but I do know Rand Paul has not been a fan of, like, some of the ICE enforcement techniques and things like that. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rand Paul press him more than any Republican on that committee. But notably, despite the grist with Rand Paul, he’s moving to have a committee vote right after this hearing. So that would be at the end of the week this week. And that would get him ready for the floor by next week to be confirmed. 

Jane Coaston: As you mentioned, the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down. Are lawmakers in the House or the Senate any closer to making a deal to reopen the agency? 

Burgess Everett: I would say no, it’s really just gone totally silent. There’s not offers being exchanged. Last week, someone familiar with the negotiations told me things are better with Kristi Noem kind of removed from them. So that’s maybe a bright spot. In the house, Democrats are trying to pass a bill funding the rest of DHS minus the immigration enforcement component. So that would be things like TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard. Popular things that both parties want to fund. Republicans have been resisting that idea. And so in the Senate, there’s no discharge petition. There’s no way to force that vote. Democrats have been coming to the floor and saying, will you guys do this? Republicans say, no, you need to fund everything. So they’re still at loggerheads. The major wild card is that those TSA lines, I do think eventually members of Congress might respond to those if people get pissed enough at them, but I haven’t seen that yet. And it’s been a month and we’re seeing huge lines and nothing’s happened. 

Jane Coaston: Do you think it will take like people getting really mad about TSA or something happening that would involve the Coast Guard for lawmakers on either side of the aisle to actually like compromise? 

Burgess Everett: I don’t see folks compromising without the president’s direct involvement at this point. And so the way the last shutdown ended was eight Democratic caucus members basically decided we’ve had enough. I guess that’s possible this time, but it feels like their party is a lot more united and you’ve seen that in the votes. Only John Fetterman has been voting with Republicans to fund the Department of Homeland Security. So, to me, I think if president Trump leaned on Republicans and said, okay, fine, let’s do what the Democrats want to do and fund everything except for immigration. Or if President Trump said, let’s cut a deal on immigration enforcement. Let’s make some concessions to Democrats. Like those are two things I could see maybe reopening the department. But I think there’s a decent chance this ends up being the longest government shutdown of all time because it’s not in the news. It’s not dominating Washington. The Senate is dealing with this voting bill this week. It’s not even related to the shutdown. And you’re confirming a new secretary in the middle of a shutdown. So it feels pretty fruitless to me. These things can come together quickly, but there’s just no evidence that it’s gonna come together this week, for example. 

Jane Coaston: As you mentioned, the other major thing on the Senate’s docket this week is the Save America Act, which would make it harder for Americans to vote by requiring things like a passport or birth certificate to register, among a bunch of other things. You’ve been doing a ton of reporting on this bill or the various versions of this bill. 

Burgess Everett: Right. 

Jane Coaston: There’s a potential vote on the bill today. What are you hearing from lawmakers ahead of the debate? 

Burgess Everett: Well, basically what is going to happen is the Senate Republicans are going to try to find 50 votes to open debate on this. Those are the two major provisions that you just mentioned. They’re also going to try to add provisions restricting universal mail-in balloting. They’re going to also try to add provisions dealing with biological men competing in women’s sports, as well as transgender surgeries for children. So this is like all of Trump’s priorities getting rolled into one. In the end, we expect that Senator Thune will end up having to have a vote at 60 votes and it will fail sometime in the next two weeks. Democrats will block it and then they’ll kind of be back at square one. And what I’m looking for is how ticked off the president’s supporters are going to be about that failure and whether they kind of view this as theater with no result possible. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, that’s been something that’s been really interesting to me is that this bill passed the House pretty easily last month, but it was kind of dead in the water in the Senate already. We already heard Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski say she was out on it. But you’ve seen online MAGA people who are like, get rid of the filibuster. We don’t need it. It’s not a real thing. We have to pass this. Why has this become such a bugaboo for the Senate GOP? 

Burgess Everett: Those sort of things are like going through the discourse online. I don’t think real people are talking about that, but it’s become a problem for Senate Republicans and sort of led to this um expectation that they can actually pass this. There are ways they could actually pass this, but they would need 50 unified Republican votes to do it either way, so they don’t have that. And so that’s kind of how it became this big problem is because the president has essentially handed John Thune an unwinnable hand for a bill that he supports but cannot pass. So this is a fairly routine um conflict where you don’t have the votes to pass your party’s priorities, except President Trump has made failure not an option. Now we have the House members saying they won’t take up Senate bills because of this. And you know, Republicans, as I wrote last week, are kind of in disarray on this. And I don’t necessarily see how they get out of it other than having this fail later this month and then moving on to other issues. 

Jane Coaston: Burgess, thank you so much for joining me. 

Burgess Everett: Thanks Jane. Great to see you. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Burgess Everett, Congressional Bureau Chief for Semafor. I have never spent $200 million on an advertising campaign prominently featuring me, but sometimes a little shameless self-promotion is necessary. So if you like the show, please subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share your favorite episodes with your friends. We’ve got more news on the way after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] If you believe that Iran should have a nuclear weapon, there’s something wrong with you. 

Jane Coaston: President Trump spoke to reporters about the Iran War during an unrelated signing event at the White House on Monday. Sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, Trump defended the decision to attack Iran. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] So, if you believe that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, they should not have it, then you have to absolutely love what I’ve done because in two weeks we have decimated them. They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no anti-aircraft weapons. 

Jane Coaston: Very rambly. Trump also told reporters on Monday that some countries have agreed to help the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though he did not mention any by name. He also urged other countries to send assistance. Iran says the strait, which one-fifth of the world’s traded oil flows through, is cut off for the United States, Israel, and their allies. But the big question is still– 

[clip of Peter Doocy] If Iran, as you say, totally obliterated, got the missiles, got the first two rounds of leadership, uh, Air Force gone, Navy gone, can we wrap this war up this week? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Yeah, sure. We could.

[clip of Peter Doocy] Will we?

[clip of President Donald Trump] I don’t think so, but it’ll be soon, it won’t be long. 

Jane Coaston: I’m surprised he didn’t say two weeks. The House Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hear from top national security officials today on global threats facing the United States. Director of National Intelligence and former critic of regime change Tulsi Gabbard will be testifying, alongside FBI Director/Olympic Party Boy Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Tomorrow, the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold its own hearing on global threats with these officials. Still not on Congress’ docket? Public hearings on the war with Iran. A group of six Democratic senators is threatening to continue forcing votes on congressional authorization for additional strikes on Iran. That is unless Senate Majority Leader John Thune agrees to hold hearings with officials, including Secretary of War/little boy Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The problem is that then Hegseth and Rubio would have to figure out answers to hard hidden questions like, why are we at war with Iran? Workers at a meatpacking plant in Colorado went on strike Monday. Union representatives say it’s the first walkout at a U.S. beef slaughterhouse in four decades. Roughly 3,800 workers are striking at the Swift Beef Company plant, which is owned by JBS USA. The employees, who are represented by United Food and Commercial Union Local 7, are in the middle of contract negotiations and are asking for higher wages and better healthcare. The union alleges that the company has made employees pay as much as $1,100 to buy personal protective equipment necessary to stay safe under difficult working conditions. A group of teenagers from Tennessee is suing Elon Musk’s company XAI, alleging that someone used an artificial intelligence feature to create naked images of them. The complaint, which was filed on Monday, also alleges that the images were shared on platforms including Discord and Telegram. Two of the plaintiffs are minors. Last year, Twitter added an image generator feature called Grok Imagine, which included a questionably named spicy mode that can generate adult content. And it was exactly as gross as you’d expect. A report earlier this year from the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate found that of an estimated three million sexual images created by Grok, 23,000 appeared to depict children. XAI and Elon Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post, who first reported on this week’s lawsuit against his company. But in a tweet from January, Musk said he was, quote, “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok, literally zero.” It’s always great to see the world’s richest man taking accountability. He will not see heaven. And that’s the news. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. I can’t believe I need to make this clear, but don’t threaten a journalist because you might lose a bet you put on a war and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about journalist, Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent for the Times of Israel, who was getting death threats because of a story he wrote that contradicted a prediction on polymarket with more than 14 million dollars of bets, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and Fabian has made it clear that getting screamed at by gamblers won’t change his reporting about the Iran War. But losing big will hopefully change the gamblers’ actions because, come on. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, and Ethan Oberman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We have help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]