How an unlikely bromance on Capitol Hill led to more weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine

WASHINGTON — The story is so familiar that by now it's a Capitol Hill cliche: Lawmakers from different parties meet in the gym and realize amid the clack of iron weights that they have more in common than not.

But the latest version comes with a geopolitical twist. The senator and the congressman who forged a rapport in the House gym quietly collaborated in a way that is making it tougher for Russia to swallow up Ukraine.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer is a New Jersey Democrat and Harvard Law grad who once wrote speeches for Bill Clinton.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin is an Oklahoma Republican who excelled in the mixed martial arts ring and called Donald Trump “the strongest president in my lifetime.”

Nothing would suggest they'd be on speaking terms in the face of institutional pressures that conspire to pull lawmakers apart. But in the years they've been sweating through round after round of burpees, they started talking. Now they kid each other and text back and forth about politics and policy. They've become friends.

They're hardly the first to see partisan suspicions melt away at the bench press. Nor do Americans necessarily need to care whether two lawmakers get along or not. Except that in a bit of serendipity, one can draw a straight line between the congressional gym and Ukraine's strength on the battlefield.

For months, Congress struggled to pass a major foreign aid package to give Ukraine billions of dollars needed to defeat Russia’s military. A breakthrough came last month, when House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defied far-right members of his GOP caucus in passing the bill.

Much has been said about Johnson's maneuvering. Less well-known is the discreet role Gottheimer and Mullin played in pushing the deal through.

Back in February, Gottheimer was driving with his 12-year-old son to go snow tubing in New Jersey when his cellphone rang. Mullin and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., were calling. He pulled over at a Dunkin’, got his son a hot chocolate and took the call.

At that point, U.S. aid to the Ukrainian war effort looked dead. Trump retains a tight grip on congressional Republicans, and his opposition had just tanked a measure that would have tied aid for Ukraine to border security.

Lawmakers feared Trump would inject himself into the talks once again if they tried to revive the package.

“You’re looking at this and going one tweet can derail the whole thing,” Gottheimer said. “My biggest concern was not having the former president derail this."

But Mullin saw an opening. Trump signaled in a Truth Social post on Feb. 10 that he might accept a deal if it was structured as a loan rather than as an outright gift.

“We think there’s a deal to be had here,” Gottheimer recalled the two senators telling him on the call.

So began a new round of intensive negotiations in which Mullin and Gottheimer, working together, played defined roles in pushing the measure forward.

Gottheimer had no relationship with Trump, but Mullin did. Mullin had no relationship with the White House, but Gottheimer did.

“Unfortunately, we have zero conversations with the White House,” Mullin said in an interview. “They’ve never reached out. I don’t know who my White House liaison is.”

Mullin flew down to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to speak to him and stayed in touch with him, making sure he wasn’t souring on the package. Gottheimer spoke often to senior White House aides and the House Democratic leadership.

Through it all, Gottheimer and Mullin talked frequently, relaying information back and forth about what they were hearing and the status of the talks, all with a view toward ensuring the deal didn’t collapse.

“Josh and I spoke almost every day, even on Sunday when I didn’t want to talk to him,” Mullin said.

Gottheimer said, “He [Mullin] was talking to the former president and getting feedback, and I was having conversations with the White House and with [House Democratic] leader Hakeem Jeffries and others on our side."

The White House shared the concern that Trump might upend the deal at any moment, a person familiar with the matter said, making Mullin's role as the Trump whisperer all the more important.

In the end, the final package carried language that appeased Trump. The $10 billion in aid to Ukraine is considered a loan, though the president is free to forgive it beginning in 2026.

With that, Trump never opposed the deal, the GOP caucus fell in line, and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law. Weapons soon began flowing to Ukraine.

“When we presented this to President Trump, he was all on board,” Mullin said. “And that was key. That allowed [Speaker] Johnson to have some cover.”

Neither Gottheimer nor Mullin is a household name in American politics. Many voters may have gotten their first glimpse of 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 aides for two hours at an Italian restaurant in Washington. "President Trump asked me to sit down and talk to him," Mullin said. Trump "called me and said, 'I think you two would get along.'"

"It was never personal," Mullin added. "You get past that stuff quick. The last time I got in a fight, I got paid to do it. So I really didn’t care to fight for free anyway."

Replicating the Mullin-Gottheimer model of lawmaking in an election year — or until the partisan fevers in Washington break — won't be easy.

That it happened at all is something of a fluke. Because Mullin and Gottheimer both like to work out in the House gym, they got to know each other.

“He has a man-crush on me,” Mullin quipped. “I had to let him down softly on that one. I told him I wasn’t into short guys."

And because they became friends, they developed a measure of trust that was crucial in reaching a Ukrainian 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’s a piece of work. His ideological views are diametrically opposed to mine on so many different fronts. But he’s a straight shooter, and you can deal-make with people who are honest.”

Their collaboration is a sign of bipartisanship that, while hardly flowering in Washington, hasn’t withered entirely.

Johnson kept his job last week because Democrats who’ve been pleased by his willingness to negotiate stepped in to defeat far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s push to force him out.

With only a 217-213 majority in the House, Johnson has little choice: If he wants to avoid utter paralysis in Congress, he can’t ignore the other side.

"The supply of people willing to do it [work in bipartisan fashion] has gone down, but the demand is way up," Gottheimer said.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com