Despite building his whole brand around saying “you’re fired,” Donald Trump still can’t bring himself to say those words out loud. At least not when it would involve admitting responsibility for making a catastrophic hire in the first place. And so Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem isn’t getting “fired” as much as having her job taken from her and being exiled — at taxpayer expense, no doubt! — to “Envoy for The Shield of the Americas.”
Which is the sort of super important job you assign a toddler to get them out of the kitchen.
At least Donald Trump afforded Noem the dignity of leaving the job on her own terms.
Fabulous!
Noem’s tenure at DHS was a rolling catastrophe. Her mismanagement included a massive expansion of immigration agents who couldn’t pass the basic fitness tests of their predecessors, militarized surges involving thousands of illegal detentions, bottlenecking FEMA disaster relief by requiring personal approval on expenditures, and serious questions about the Department’s finances. And that’s before we address the innocent people her agents killed.
But she did show off a number of new, thematic outfits!
And yet, despite all the substantive failures, what ultimately spelled the end of Gestapo Barbie was the unforgivable sin of being terrible on television.
Trump was reportedly frustrated with Noem’s appearances before the Senate and House Judiciary committees this week, where she managed the impressive feat of uniting Democrats and Republicans in shared contempt. Republican Senator Thom Tillis called her leadership “a disaster” and compared it to the time she bragged about shooting her own dog for being “untrainable.”
“Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment — not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” Tillis said.
Senator John Kennedy, channeling Foghorn Leghorn as always, attacked Noem over a $220 million ad campaign that Kennedy found only “effective in your name recognition.” DHS spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on commercials of Noem herself telling migrants to leave the country against the backdrop of Mount Rushmore. In a curious twist, that money was funneled through a company created just 11 days before it won the contract. Normally federal contracts have more oversight than this, but Noem invoked a national emergency to dispense with the bidding process. That company then subcontracted the work to a firm run by the husband of Noem’s former chief DHS spokesperson. The firm also has ties to Noem’s longtime adviser and alleged romantic partner Corey Lewandowski. Subcontractors can, of course, get around public disclosure altogether.
Maybe giving her a $30 billion slush fund was a bad idea.
When Kennedy pressed her on whether Trump had approved the campaign, Noem said yes. Repeatedly. Under oath. The White House claims Trump doesn’t know anything about it. In Noem’s defense, Trump doesn’t seem to know where he is day-to-day so they might both be right.
Republicans had no problem last year when she went before Congress and beclowned herself for not knowing what habeas corpus meant. But being a moron is not as grave a transgression as looking embattled on screen.
On that point — that the Republicans don’t care how stupid an administration official might be:
Markwayne Mullin really did need to get out of the Senate. Tommy Tuberville is running for governor of Alabama and he’s the only thing standing between Mullin and the title of dumbest U.S. Senator. Mullin is a former MMA fighter who once tried to physically fight a Teamsters union president during a Senate hearing. Recently, Mullin appeared on CNN and struggled to explain how Iran could be rebuilding nuclear facilities that Trump had supposedly “obliterated.” When pressed three times on the logical contradiction, Mullin compared it to rebuilding a house after a tornado. Which is a fair analogy as long as you accept that thermonuclear devices are roughly as complex as a double wide trailer.
None of this should change how Homeland Security functions. Mullin isn’t being brought in to cure all those illegal detentions, he’s being brought in to keep his head mostly down amid the criticism. And when it comes to keeping his head down, Mullin has a lot of experience dating back to January 6:
Meanwhile, Noem is unceremoniously dispensed with by her cruel and unforgiving master for being bad at her job. And they say karma doesn’t have a sense of humor.
Earlier: Kristi Noem Thinks Habeas Corpus Is A Deportation Spell
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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