WHEN CONSERVATIVE PUNDIT Benny Johnson interviewed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on the sidelines of the Republican convention last week, it was supposed to be a layup for the cabinet member.

“You’ve deported all the MS-13, so I’m going to start a new gang: White Boy Gang!” the excitable Johnson said, providing an early indication of the soft treatment Mullin faced.

Mullin chuckled. But Johnson’s antics may have given him a false sense of security. At the interview’s conclusion, Johnson asked when the federal government would, at long last, deport Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for supposedly marrying her brother.

“Something’s going to happen,” Mullin assured Johnson, putting his hand on Johnson’s shoulder. “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States.”

He mumbled on a bit more. “Here’s what I want to make sure we do,” Mullin said. “If we actually move a case forward, it’s not a political case, it’s an actual case, because they did things wrong.”

Mullin didn’t really have anything further to offer on that. And even the normally obsequious Johnson seemed piqued with his response. (At one point, he even rolled his eyes.) It turns out that Johnson’s reaction was a sign of things to come. Mullin’s muddling about whether the Trump administration will fulfill a long-dreamed-of MAGA promise and deport Omar has infuriated right-wing pundits, putting more pressure on the embattled homeland security secretary.

“Okay, great, if we know that, what are we doing?” the Blaze host Sara Gonzales said on her show in reaction to Mullin’s interview.

“That’s very illegal, right?” the conservative influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau replied. “Is that not enough to prosecute her?”

In fact, it’s not. Because much to the chagrin of Johnson, Gonzales, DuRousseau, and others, the idea that Omar married her brother is based on some of the least credible evidence ever put forward in right-wing media. It certainly wouldn’t stand up in court. The whole thing, in fact, boils down to a single anonymous post on a Somali-American web forum.¹

But the untrustworthy provenance of the Omar brother-marriage story hasn’t put an end to years of pro-Trump commentary that takes it as a given. Nor has it put an end to the repeated suggestions from Trump administration officials that Omar’s deportation is right around the corner. In May, Vice President JD Vance said the Justice Department was investigating Omar for immigration fraud in connection with her former marriage.

Like many of the pledges that people in Trump world make to prosecute and deport the president’s political enemies, this pledge has also run into legal hurdles and an actual reality that is not very accommodating to their goals. And it appears that Mullin is now set to take the blame for the absence of any action.

Right-wing media influencer Laura Loomer, who once traveled to Minneapolis in her own fruitless attempt to prove Omar married her brother, fumed after the Mullin interview that Omar was somehow being protected from deportation.

“What’s the point of talking about it if you aren’t actually going to hold anyone accountable?” Loomer tweeted. “More red meat for the base with zero accountability?”

BUT PERHAPS NO ONE WAS ANGRIER with Mullin than Fox News host Tomi Lahren. On Saturday, Lahren devoted much of her show to claiming the DHS secretary was using Omar’s case as a sideshow to distract from the perceived lack of larger-scale deportations.

“If they want to do an investigation, do an investigation,” she said. But whether Omar married her brother wouldn’t “get people out to vote,” Lahren said. “What’s going to get people out to vote for Republicans is promises made, promises kept.”

Lahren accused Mullin of blowing off her requests for an interview more than a dozen times.

“I don’t want to hear him answering questions from influencers to own the libs,” she said. “Owning the libs is so fun. I enjoy it, too. What I enjoy more is ten million illegal aliens being deported, because that was the promise of mass deportations.”

The list of Mullin’s detractors over the Omar issue has continued to grow in the days since he spoke to Johnson. That group now includes pro-Trump X influencers Ian Miles Cheong and Gunther Eagleman, and Alex Jones protégés Harrison Smith and Rob Dew.

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Mullin’s dilemma on Omar reminds me of former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s infamous Epstein binders debacle. Back in February 2025, Bondi tried to win over MAGA influencers visiting the White House by handing them binders supposedly filled with fresh files on Jeffrey Epstein.

But when Bondi’s files turned out to be old information that had already been released to the public, the incident fueled new demands for the actual files, becoming a mess for the Trump administration.

Mullin’s problem also recalls the Ju