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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Richard Luscombe

Republican senator claims video floating killing of journalists was a ‘joke’

a man in a suit and cowboy hat speaks
Markwayne Mullin at the US Capitol in Washington DC on 13 March 2025. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Republican US senator and Donald Trump loyalist Markwayne Mullin has evidently sought to backtrack from comments suggesting politicians could “handle our differences” with journalists by shooting and killing them, insisting he was trying to make a joke.

The Oklahoma lawmaker, a former mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, on Saturday posted to X a video of himself at a stairway in the US Capitol building recounting the tale of the newspaper columnist Charles Kincaid.

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