President Trump has begun describing his Homeland Security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to people close to him as "weak and off message," according to reporting this week from the Wall Street Journal — a notable shift toward a Cabinet member he handpicked barely four months ago. One senior administration official confirmed the president's frustration but said there's no active plan to remove him from the post.
Trump tapped Mullin for DHS in March, installing him in place of Kristi Noem after her tenure was upended by backlash over two fatal shootings of civilians by immigration officers in Minnesota. The former Oklahoma senator was viewed as a safe pair of hands who could quiet the controversy swirling around the agency. His closeness with Trump reportedly traces back years earlier, to a stretch when the president repeatedly checked in on Mullin while Mullin's teenage son fought to recover from a severe head injury.
Oklahoma Remarks Reignite the Base
The current strain traces largely to a speech Mullin gave to the National Governors Association in Oklahoma City in early August, where he argued that the idea of immigrants displacing American workers doesn't hold up evenly across every industry, and floated expanding work-visa programs to fill certain labor shortages. Hardline immigration voices pounced. Activist Laura Loomer wrote online that Mullin has "done absolutely nothing to increase the rate of mass deportations," a line that captured a broader sentiment among Trump's base that the secretary isn't hardline enough on enforcement.
The Fireworks That Almost Weren't
Tension between the two men surfaced even earlier, around the Fourth of July, when Mullin moved to cancel the administration's "Salute to America 250" celebration on the National Mall as severe thunderstorms rolled into Washington. Trump personally overturned that call; after several hours of evacuations and delay, he finally took the stage past 11 p.m. for his remarks and the fireworks show. The president later credited himself publicly with reversing the cancellation, and the episode is said to have left him privately furious with his DHS chief — even as the administration insisted afterward that the night had been a success.
More recently, Mullin's decision to put forward Lance Schroyer — a former Oklahoma state trooper who once worked on Mullin's personal security detail — to run ICE has widened the divide. Schroyer's federal immigration credentials are thin, limited mainly to a local 287(g) partnership between his old department and ICE. When Trump first announced the nomination back in June, both Stephen Miller and Tom Homan were reportedly caught off guard by it. In the weeks since, Homan has gone further and come out publicly against the pick, and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has criticized the nomination on his podcast as well. Mullin told Fox News he spent roughly two months reviewing candidates before settling on Schroyer, explaining that he wanted "someone that could also be confirmed."
Officials Deny Any Real Split
Publicly, both DHS and the White House reject the notion that there's daylight between Trump and his DHS chief. A DHS spokesperson maintained the department remains unified behind the president's agenda, while White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said, in remarks reported by Forbes, that the president retains "confidence in Secretary Mullin and his entire Administration" to carry out what voters asked for.
Removing a Cabinet secretary barely four months into the job would be an unusual step, and people close to the situation say it isn't imminent. Still, with prominent voices in Trump's base openly questioning his judgment and the president himself reportedly losing patience with an old friend, Mullin's footing inside an administration built around loyalty and message discipline looks noticeably shakier now than it did the day he was sworn in.
