Watch: Sen. Markwayne Mullin Reveals Deranged Treatment Dems Hit Rubio with That Nobody Watching from Home Saw

Americans face a stark reality: reclaiming control of our elected legislature will be a steep climb against entrenched forces that have turned even the U.S. Senate into a stage for political theater rather than serious governance.

Take, for example, Wednesday’s revelations on Fox Business from Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin regarding Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s contrasting treatment by Senate Democrats. In public hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrats lobbed hostile questions at Rubio over President Donald J. Trump’s bold foreign policy actions.

But behind closed doors? A very different reaction.

“When Secretary Rubio gave his testimony in a classified setting,” Mullin said in a clip posted to the social media platform X, “every one of these Democrats clapped — literally clapped — after the briefing, because of the extraordinary job our men and women in the IC — the intelligence community — and within DoW, the Department of War, did on removing this dictator from our hemisphere.”

That response underscores a critical truth: many on the other side privately respect the Trump administration’s decisive action in arresting Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, even if they won’t publicly admit it.

Yet because today’s Democratic Party must appease its most radical base, senators put on a show of outrage — theatrics that do nothing to strengthen American security or public confidence.

Case in point: Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who in another widely viewed clip on X aggressively challenged Rubio on President Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and broader foreign policy toward Venezuela.

Duckworth blasted the law as a “wartime power,” despite the historical reality that the U.S. hasn’t formally declared war since World War II and that the Quasi-War of 1798 — the conflict underpinning the statute — was itself an undeclared naval engagement.

She also pressed Rubio on Trump’s assertion that he retains the right to take further military action against Venezuela — a right all presidents inherently possess to defend American interests and national security.

Finally, Duckworth launched into a spirited defense of NATO allies, a stance that plays well on camera but does little to address the complex geopolitical environment the United States navigates today.

Sen. Rubio, who has consistently argued that the United States is not at war with Venezuela, pushed back on such criticism while highlighting the strategic necessity of removing Maduro’s regime as a destabilizing force in the Western Hemisphere.

Republican leaders have noted that this kind of performative opposition from Senate Democrats — loud in public, conciliatory in private — only reinforces voter disillusionment with a legislature that seems more interested in optics than results.