WASHINGTON — The story is so familiar it’s now a Capitol Hill cliché: Lawmakers from different parties gather in the gym and realize, amid the clatter of iron weights, that they have more in common than not.
But the latest version brings a geopolitical twist. The senator and congressman who forged a relationship in the House gym have quietly collaborated in a way that is making it harder for Russia to swallow Ukraine.
Representative Josh Gottheimer is a New Jersey Democrat and Harvard Law graduate who once wrote speeches for Bill Clinton.
Senator Markwayne Mullin is an Oklahoma Republican who excelled in the mixed martial arts ring and who called Donald Trump “the strongest president of my life.”
Nothing would suggest that they would be in a position to speak out in the face of institutional pressures that conspire to tear legislators apart. But in the years when they sweated round after round of burpees, they started talking. Now they joke with each other and exchange messages about politics and policies. They became friends.
They are hardly the first to see partisan suspicion dissipate on the bench press. Nor do Americans necessarily need to worry about whether two legislators get along or not. But, by chance, it is possible to draw a straight line between the congressional gymnasium and Ukraine’s strength on the battlefield.
For months, Congress struggled to pass a major foreign aid package that gave Ukraine billions of dollars needed to defeat the Russian military. A breakthrough came in April, when House Speaker Mike Johnson defied far-right members of his Republican caucus by passing the bill.
Much has been said about Johnson’s maneuvers. Less well known is the quiet role that Gottheimer and Mullin played in bringing the deal to fruition.
In February, Gottheimer was driving with his 12-year-old son to go snow tubing in New Jersey when his cell phone rang. Mullin and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R., S.C., were calling. He stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts, got his son some hot chocolate and answered the call.
At that point, U.S. aid to the Ukrainian war effort seemed dead. Trump maintains a tight grip on Republicans in Congress and his opposition has just failed over a measure that would have tied Ukraine aid to border security.
Lawmakers feared Trump would once again meddle in negotiations if they tried to revive the package.
“You’re looking at this and you think, one tweet could mess everything up,” Gottheimer said. “My biggest concern was not having the former president get in the way of this.”
But Mullin saw an opening. The former president signaled in a Truth Social post on Feb. 10 that he might accept a deal if it were structured as a loan rather than an outright grant.
“We think there’s a deal to be done here,” Gottheimer recalled the two senators telling him on the conference call.
Thus began a new round of intense negotiations in which Mullin and Gottheimer, working together, played defined roles in promoting the measure.
Gottheimer had no relationship with Trump, but Mullin did. Mullin had no relationship with the White House, but Gottheimer did.
“Unfortunately, we have not had any conversations with the White House,” Mullin said in an interview. “They never got in touch. I don’t know who my contact is at the White House.”
Mullin flew to Mar-a-Lago to speak with Trump and kept in touch with him, making sure the former president wasn’t irritating the pack. In turn, Gottheimer spoke frequently with senior White House aides and House Democratic leadership.
Through it all, Gottheimer and Mullin talked frequently, relaying information about what they were hearing and the status of the negotiations, all with the goal of making sure the deal didn’t fall through.
“Josh and I talked almost every day, even on Sundays when I didn’t want to talk to him,” Mullin said.
“He [Mullin] I was talking to the former president and getting feedback, and I was talking to the White House and I was talking to [Democratic] leader Hakeem Jeffries and others on our side,” Gottheimer said.
The White House has shared concerns that Trump could upend the deal at any time, a person familiar with the matter said, making Mullin’s role as Trump’s whisperer all the more important.
In the end, the final package contained language that appeased Trump. The $10 billion in aid to Ukraine is considered a loan, although the president is free to forgive it from 2026 onwards.
As a result, Trump never opposed the agreement, the Republican bench aligned itself and Biden sanctioned the measure. Arms soon began flowing into Ukraine.
“When we presented this to President Trump, he agreed,” Mullin said. “And that was fundamental. This allowed [House Speaker Mike] Johnson to get some coverage.
Neither Gottheimer nor Mullin are household names in American politics. Many voters may have first seen Mullin in November, when he challenged Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a fight during a tense public hearing.
They never fought; they went to dinner instead. The two met with advisors for two hours at an Italian restaurant in Washington. “President Trump asked me to sit down and talk to him,” Mullin said. The former president “called me and said, ‘I think you two would get along.’ “
“It was never personal,” Mullin added. “You get over these things quickly. The last time I fought, I got paid to do it. So I didn’t really mind fighting for free anyway.”
Replicating the Mullin-Gottheimer legislative model in an election year – or until partisan fevers break out in Washington – will not be easy.
The fact that this happened is something of a fluke. Why Mullin and Gottheimer like to work out at home academyThey met.
“He has a crush on me,” Mullin joked. “I had to let him down gently on that. I told him I didn’t like short guys.”
And because they became friends, they developed a measure of trust that was crucial to reaching the Ukraine aid deal that both sides wanted.
“You spend an hour and a half with someone every day, you become friends. You bull—-,” Gottheimer said.
“I like the guy,” he said of Mullin. “He is a job. His ideological views are diametrically opposed to mine on many different fronts. But he’s a straight shooter and you can make deals with people who are honest.”
Their collaboration is a sign of bipartisanship that, while it has hardly flourished in Washington, has not completely withered.
Johnson kept his job last week because Democrats, who were pleased with his willingness to negotiate, intervened to defeat pressure from far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to force him out.
With just a 217-213 majority in the House, Johnson has little choice: If he wants to avoid total paralysis in Congress, he cannot ignore the other side.
“The supply of people willing to do it [work in bipartisan fashion] fell, but demand increased,” Gottheimer said.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
