“You know, some people are real strong behind a keypad, but when they get called out, it’s completely different,” Mullin said. “People’s asked me, too, ‘Is this becoming of a U.S. senator.’ And I’m like, man, I’m a guy from Oklahoma first. In Oklahoma, you don’t run your mouth like that, and if you do run your mouth like that, you’re expected to be called out on it.”
His Newsmax interlocutor then asked him if anything in Senate rules allowed for the settling of disputes frontier-style. “Well, we looked into the rules, and you know, you used to be able to cane,” came Mullin’s reply.
He was referring of course to one of the most notorious incidents in the history of the Senate, the caning on the Senate floor of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks after Sumner had attacked Brooks’s cousin, Senator Andrew Butler, over his pro-slavery views. It’s not true that anybody “used to be able to cane.” Obviously, that was against Senate rules then as now.