WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) ripped his colleague Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) at the start of the latter’s confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Homeland Security, calling him “a man with anger issues” who “has no regrets about brawling in a Senate committee.”

The GOP chairman’s fighting words came just minutes after the high-stakes hearing kicked off, with Paul also sharing personal frustrations that Mullin called him “a freaking snake” who deserved to have six of his ribs broken by a neighbor over political differences.

“I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force,” Paul underscored, telling Mullin he has since delivered “no apology” and expressed “no regrets.”

Mullin, in his opening statement, rejected Paul’s claim that he never reached out to discuss the matter privately, that he didn’t “support” the violent attack on the chairman and that he wasn’t “apologizing” for pointing out the Kentucky Republican’s “character.”

“We just don’t get along,” Mullin told Paul. “However, sir, that doesn’t keep me at all from doing my job. I can have differences of opinion with everybody in this room, but as Secretary of Homeland, I’ll be protecting everybody — including Kentucky as much as my own backyard in Oklahoma.”

Given Paul’s opposition, Mullin will face an uphill battle to secure confirmation in the Senate Homeland Security Committee — which has eight Republicans and seven Democrats — on a vote currently planned for Thursday.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the panel, also expressed “reservations” about Mullin helming DHS — but Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) maintained he had an “open mind” about the Republican senator.

There’s precedent for some cabinet-level nominations to be discharged out of committee and receive a floor vote but that would require senators to meet the 60-vote threshold rather than a simple majority.

Paul bellowed at the top of Wednesday’s hearing that Mullin “told the media that I was a ‘freaking snake’” and said he “completely understood why I had been assaulted” — but “never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me the assault was justified.”

“I did not say I supported it, I said, ‘I understood it,’” Mullin fired back. “Everybody in this room knows that I’m very blunt and direct to the point. And if I have something to say, I’ll say it directly to your face.”

“I’ve worked with many people in this room. It seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us,” added Mullin, a former mixed martial arts combatant. “And as far as me saying that I invoke violence … I don’t think anybody should be hit by surprise. I don’t like that.”

A neighbor in Paul’s Bowling Green, Ky., gated community pummeled the senator outside his home in November 2017, leaving Paul with six cracked ribs and a damaged lung.

“A Trump-hating felon attacked me from behind in my yard,” the chairman recalled Wednesday. “I was wearing noise-cancellation headphones — never saw him coming, running pell-mell down the hill.”

The Republican chairman said he later had a portion of his lung removed and suffered an infection due to complications following surgery.

“If you just disliked me so much that you approved of violence against me, people could just write it off … maybe they hate each other, but really, there’s a pattern of this. Let’s go ahead and roll the tape,” Paul added before playing footage of Mullin threatening to fight with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien during a 2023 Senate hearing.

On that occasion, the Oklahoma Republican challenged O’Brien as he sat in the witness chair: “Sir, this is the time, this is the place. You wanna run your mouth? We could be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”

Mullin responded to Paul that O’Brien was currently sitting behind him and is now “my good friend.”

“I was simply pointing out … some of the rules that still apply to this body — for instance, dueling with two consenting adults — is still there,” Mullin said.

“It’s been illegal for 170 years. There’s no precedent for legal dueling,” Paul disputed, referencing even the “men who beat [abolitionist Sen.] Charles Sumner with a cane” on the floor of the US Senate in 1856 “fled the country.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent similarly invoked the rich American history of dueling at the highest levels of American government last year, when he nearly came to blows with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte.

“Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling,” he quipped in a September 2025 interview.

But Mullin’s relationships with members on both side of the aisle appeared to win him more support than the current Homeland security secretary.

The GOPers had slammed the DHS secretary Mullin would be replacing, the recently fired Kristi Noem, for greenlighting a $220 million ad campaign aimed at encouraging illegal aliens to self-deport — starring her.

President Trump also disputed that Noem had asked for and received presidential authorization for the nine-figure ad blitz.

That controversy followed the fatal shootings in January of two American citizens by federal immigration officers in Minnesota, triggering bipartisan backlash against Noem.

“A secretary who jumps to conclusions without the facts, as we saw in the case of the Renee Good and Alex Pretti killings, only worsens the situation and actually makes us less safe,” Peters told Mullin.

“This is a role where temperament matters, where judgment matters, and where experience matters.”

Paul and Peters also expressed concerns about a previously undisclosed — and reportedly classified — trip that Mullin took abroad while serving in the House a decade ago.

The Michigan Democrat revealed that FBI files on the Republican senator showed he also traveled overseas to Azerbaijan and Georgia in 2021.

“In 2015, I was asked to train with a very small contingency and go to a certain area, which was scheduled for 2016,” Mullin explained, noting that he had to “meet certain training qualifications” that included a military survival program known as SERE training

“I’ve never spoken specifically on details, on dates or on the mission,” he added. “And like I said, that was an official trip that is classified.”

He later agreed to share more details about the trip with the chairman and ranking member in a classified setting.