I suppose I owe Kristi Noem a little bit of gratitude, if nothing else for her timing. Before she yet again became a trending topic yesterday afternoon all I could think about was the fact that today marks six years exactly to the day that I was sent home from Sony for the final time as an (on paper at least) executive, pretty much as quickly as word finally got out that I hadn’t actually died a few weeks earlier and the interpretation of the previous conversation I had had with my detached supervisor led them to conclude the shock of their decision to replace me wouldn’t set me back enough for a relapse. Yeah, it still hurts and I still miss that damn rainbow lot more than breath.
I’m often reminded of that experience by otherwise well-meaning friends when my id otherwise gets the best of me and I appear to celebrate when folks I have deemed to be overqualified and unsuccessful wind up with similar fates. I actually have taken such sage advice to heart and even apologized a couple of times for my short-sightedness. But there’s not a chance in hell I’m gonna cut Noem an ounce of such slack.
NPR’s Ximena Bustillo offered up about as even-handed a recap of yesterday’s news as was possible:
President Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and said Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma would replace her. Noem is the first Cabinet secretary to leave the Trump administration in Trump’s second term. The announcement comes after Noem spent two days being grilled by lawmakers in Congress over her leadership. Noem, who was formerly South Dakota’s governor, had been at the forefront of Trump’s efforts to carry out mass deportations. Following her confirmation, she quickly became the face of the administration’s immigration agenda — making multimillion-dollar ads urging people to self-deport, conducting press conferences around the U.S. touting deportation numbers, and conducting international visits geared at promoting Trump’s vision.
It was the dirty details of that ad campaign that appeared to the final straw for even the most blindly trusting MAGAots, as Bloomberg’s Myles Miller and Jeff Mason shared in their more pointed post-mortem:
Noem’s 13-month tenure leading the Department of Homeland Security was marked by controversy. But it wasn’t the two American citizens’ deaths at the hands of federal immigration agents that ultimately cost her the job, nor the allegations of an affair with an adviser, or the criticism that she was slow to provide federal reimbursements to states after natural disasters.
Instead, she was taken down by an almost quarter-billion-dollar advertising campaign starring herself.
On Tuesday, she told a Senate committee the contract for the campaign had gone to competitive bid. On Wednesday, before the House, she acknowledged it hadn’t. That testimony ended her tenure. According to a person familiar with the episode, President Donald Trump grew angry after Noem told lawmakers that he had personally approved the campaign. Trump hadn’t, the person said. Trump told Reuters on Thursday he was unaware of the ad campaign.
Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who sharply questioned Noem during Tuesday’s hearing, said Trump called him after expressing displeasure. The president was “not a happy cowboy,” Kennedy said. “I remember thinking that the secretary’s pretty much as dead as fried chicken.”
Whew. At last a Trumpkin who actually prefers his poultry dead and pooches and peepers alive. Unlike, of course, Ms. Noem and her entourage.
Yeah, I went there. But I’m not the only one who refuses to let bygones by bygones, as PEOPLE’s Brooke Migdon shared with her readers:
When Sen. Thom Tillis congratulated Mullin on his nomination to replace outgoing Noem, he referenced their mutual love of dogs — and Noem’s killing of her own…Tillis had earlier called for Noem’s resignation during a tense oversight hearing this week, comparing Noem’s leadership at DHS to a widely publicized anecdote from her 2024 memoir, in which she described shooting and killing a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named Cricket…The dog, Noem claimed, was “untrainable” and “less than worthless” as a hunting animal. Noem said she had tried, unsuccessfully, to train Cricket using an electric collar, but ultimately made the decision to put her down by shooting her in a gravel pit after the dog attacked a neighbor’s chickens.
And it appears to be a truly biparisan piling on of crocodile tears, as CBS CHICAGO’s
Reaction from Illinois politicians was swift, and savage…”Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Gov. JB Pritzker posted on X.com, along with a video. “Here’s your legacy: Corruption and chaos. Parents and children tear gassed. Moms and nurses, U.S. citizens, getting shot in the face.” “Now that you’re gone, don’t think you just get to walk away. I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable,” the video concludes.
And of course, what would any recap of the downfall of ICE Barbie be without a reminder that her personal behavior was anything but a role model for young impressionable women. THE NEW YORK TIMES’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz seemingly enjoyed recapping these lurid details for their readers:
(D)uring a House hearing this week, Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Democrat of California, alluding to rumors, asked Ms. Noem if she had a sexual relationship with her senior adviser, Corey Lewandowski. Ms. Noem responded by calling the question “tabloid garbage.” “This has been something that I have refuted for years, and I continue to do that,” she said at a different point in the hearing. Democrats, she said, attack Republican women by saying “we are either stupid, or we’re sluts.” She added: “I am neither of those.”
Technically, she’s correct. A slut is usually someone who indiscriminantly sleeps around out of some sort of compulsion or internal void–you know, the kind that Mary Trump’s psychology background would contend is at the core of her cousin’s id. Noem selectively chose someone who inexplicably continues to be one of his favorites and cashed in on her Mar-a-Lago makeover triple of fake lips, hair extensions and implants in as opportunistic and corrupt a way as any actual resident of that address would. That’s not stupid, that’s calculating. And had she been able as convincing a liar as any of them, she might have actually survived this as she did the other litany of incidents that defined her brief but tawdry tenure. Youngs and Aleaziz did a neat recap; it’s worth clicking on. There’s actually a bit more comic relief than what even Senator Kennedy–rapidly becoming this generation’s answer to Senator Claghorn (Google it, kids)–otherwise provides.
All this “ding, dong the witch is dead” tenor aside, this is all not as happy an ending as perhaps Noem provided Lewandowski at 30,000 feet. For one, in this world “fired” still means you get a golden parachute, albeit one as tawdry and overblown as the gold that now overwhelms the Oval Office. Bustillo noted that in her report:
Noem “will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida,” Trump posted on social media. “I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.'”
Despite Jared Moskovitz’ on-point observation that this bullsh-t title sounded like yet another nutty idea in the spirit of the Board of Peace or the Gulf of America that he alleged was probably inspired by the last time he watched an Avengers movie, the fact of the matter is she still has a job. More than I was given six years ago, and I didn’t even leave any sex toys around to be found (For the record, FACTUALLY claims neither did she; but clearly this hasn’t been an administration where such details matter much).
And we’re not exactly getting a significant upgrade in competence or independence with her replacement. Here’s how CNN Michael Williams rattled off Mullin’s CV bullets:
Mullin, a first-term senator who has served in that role since 2023, is a former mixed-martial artist and business owner who is a strong supporter of Trump’s hardline immigration policy…Mullin wrestled in college and fought briefly as a professional mixed martial artist…He has taken his fighter’s spirit to Capitol Hill. During his time in the House, Mullin was famous for his intense, MMA-style workouts that he used to run for other members of Congress.
His past public comments have shown that he is closely aligned with Trump’s agenda. Following a Supreme Court decision last year that was intertwined with Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, Mullin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that babies born in the US to undocumented parents should also be expelled from the country – framing that position as a desire to keep the children with their parents. “Why wouldn’t you send a child with their parents?” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker, “I mean, why would you want to separate them?”
Great. The best qualities of JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Lindsay Graham and RFK, Junior rolled up into one.
And did we happen to mention that as Bustillo noted Trump also touted the fact that Mullin is the only Native American in the Senate? Kinda disappointing Elizabeth Warren appears to be above engaging him in any sort of a showdown on knowledge of tribal customs.
Still, through all of this snarky gloating one fact to me stands out the most. Would any mother–regardless of ideology–want their daughter to grow up with the integrity, loyalty and class that Noem possesses? And would any legitimately aspirational professional woman honor consider the tactics Noem has employed throughout her clawing climb to the top as ones that advance the case that women are indeed as deserving and qualified as any man? Seriously–shame on any of you who would.
So I have only two words for Ms. Noem as she hopefully at least fades into a hopefully more obscure role–you know, the same kind that cast her doppelganger Kimberly Guifoyle out of Donald Trump, Junior’s bed and hid her away as Ambassador to Greece? Later, bitch.
Until next time…