Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) defended the practice of “dueling” — even though it has been illegal for over 100 years.
During a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned whether Mullin was the right person to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because of his history of promoting violence. He played video of a 2023 Senate floor interaction in which Mullin threatened to fight Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
“In the days after the fight, you did many interviews in which you justified the violence as historically justified by precedents, such as caning and dueling,” Paul said of one argument in the Senate.
“Is it today your opinion that the caning of Charles Sumner was not only justified but argues still for resolving our political differences with violence?”
In 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was brutally beaten by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks on the Senate floor. Sumner had delivered a scathing anti-slavery speech criticizing Brooks’ cousin. The caning left Sumner severely injured, becoming a pivotal moment that intensified sectional tensions between North and South preceding the Civil War.
“What I was simply pointing out is some of the rules that still applied to this body,” Mullin claimed. “For instance, dueling with two consenting adults is still there.”
“It’s been illegal for 170 years,” Paul pointed out. “There’s no precedent for legal dueling. Even then, they fled the country.”
“Do you realize that the man that beat Charles Sumner with a cane, he beat him until he was unconscious?” he added. “You know why no senators intervened? Because his friend held a gun on the other senators, and he kept beating him and beating him until he crushed his skull. That’s what you’re insinuating as the president of the Senate, and that’s what you live by.”
“That is a very, very dangerous sentiment.”
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