Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin resorts to his default position any time he cannot defend the indefensible. Cry fake news and deny reality instead. Never mind that Hegseth hasn't denied any of the reporting on the boat strikes in the Caribbean that, as we've discussed here, are likely war crimes.

During an appearance on CNN's State of the Union this Sunday, host Dana Bash asked Mullin about recent reporting from their network on the strikes, and the barely literate Mullin twisted himself in knots trying to deny any of the incidents actually happened before begrudgingly agreeing that yes, there should be some actual oversight from the committees in Congress over whether the strikes were legal.

BASH: I want to get your response to new details we're learning about the U.S. on a suspected drug boat which have killed dozens of people. Now sources tell CNN that in the first strike in September, one missile disabled the ship and killed many of the crew members, but when some survived that first strike, the military launched a second strike to kill anyone who was left. And these individuals were apparently unarmed, already injured from the original attack. Are you comfortable with that?

MULLIN: Well, I don't know if I believe that at all, because we're doing an alleged sources. Nothing has been verified by this. We do know that a survivor that did survive in later attacks was picked up by the United States Coast Guard or Navy, I'm not for sure. It was sent back to his country. You guys reported on that.

So I doubt very seriously that took place, and unless there was more to the story that the boat was enabled again and they were trying to run again, I don't know, but I don't think this story is accurate.

And we keep talking about something that's alleged. It's alleged. It's not... nothing's been proven at all about this. No one's come out and said it was accurate. It's just somebody by alleged source that anybody can name or make up that this supposedly took place.

BASH: Well, the chairman, the Republican chairman of your committee, Armed Services in the Senate and the Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee have both taken enough... see enough credence in this that they say that they are investigating in a bipartisan way, which we haven't seen a lot of in this administration so far. They're promising vigorous oversight to be precise.

If they find through the vigorous oversight that...

MULLIN: They didn't... Well, I was going to say they didn't specifically name this issue. They said of the whole operation that's going on in international waters against these terrorist organizations trying to flood our streets with drugs. [...] They didn't specifically name this particular situation. By the way, in the House, they did the same thing.

BASH: Okay. As part of that broad oversight process, if they do find that the Defense Secretary gave an order to eliminate people who were already injured on a boat, which a lot of legal experts say is illegal -- Mark Kelly was just here and he said it's potentially a war crime -- should Pete Heseth face consequences?

MULLIN: Listen, you're once again making assumptions that's not even kind of accurate, I don't believe. All we're doing is talking about an assumption. This isn't been proven. It hasn't been said it was actually true.

And as far as Mark Kelly, what he says, Mark Kelly is saying the most ridiculous things I've ever heard right now. He's encouraging men and women uniform to question the orders of superior officers. He just got done saying that the president was racist because he doesn't like brown people. Yet I sit in front of you as a Cherokee Indian, and I'm very close friends with the president.

It's ridiculous what Mark Kelly is saying, and he's losing credibility every single day. And this particular situation you're talking about, once again, is alleged over an anonymous source, which the media is really good about always trying to name some anonymous source, but and then they make a big deal about it as though it was true...

BASH: So you don't think it's true?

MULLIN: ...true information. I said before...

BASH: Full stop, do you know that it's not?

MULLIN: Why would it be true? And then we know that the president, we know that the, that the Navy or the Coast Guard has picked up survivors already and sent them back to the country. So now we're saying that they did it once and they didn't do it again. I don't believe this at all.

After Bash pressed him further on the legality, Mullin basically doubled down like we saw Hegseth do and defended the strikes, which I'm sure we'll see him do if and when there are hearings in the Senate on this.

BASH: Okay. Could that be because a lawyer in the Pentagon said you can't do that again and then they didn't? Then they actually listened the second time? Is that possible?

MULLIN: No, actually not, and I don't know why we're spending so much time on this. The president and the secretary of war has been very clear they're going to use lethality against our enemies, home and abroad.

This has been very clear what's going on right now, that the drug organization that is considered a terrorist organization that is flooding our streets with drugs, that's killing Americans every single day, they're being proactive on it.

Good on them. Are we doubting that these drug dealers are actually drug dealers? We think they're just out there fishing. Do we doubt that this is a terrorist organization that's killing thousands and thousands of people on our streets? What are we questioning here?

These individuals don't care about the lives of our friends and families. Why do we care if we take them out in international water? It is a war because they've declared war on our streets and the president and Secretary Hegseth is doing exactly what we should be doing, being proactive against our enemies. And that's what they're doing here. And I applaud them for doing something because the past administration did absolutely nothing, while thousands of Americans died on our streets.

BASH: Yeah. And I just want to point out that again, that it's the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee who say that they want to look at the whole operation which you just described. Thank you very much...

MULLIN: The whole operation.

BASH: Yes. Senator...

MULLIN: Well, we have oversight.

BASH: Yeah.

MULLIN: That's our job. We have oversight and there's nothing wrong with oversight.

BASH: Absolutely. It just hasn't always been carried out in recent months.

Nonexistent Dana. The word you're looking for is nonexistent. Republicans don't believe in oversight when one of their own is in the White House.