Kristi Noem has been fired from her cabinet position as head of the department of homeland security, capping a turbulent time that saw her treating the office as one to provide her with all manner of perks like a luxury jet to allow her to jet set all over the place for photo ops where she could strut around in a cowboy hat, and purportedly using it to enable an affair with a White House advisor. Th jet had a private boudoir with a queen size bed, even though she said it was meant to transport detainees out of the country.
The luxury executive jet sought by the DHS for immigrant deportation flights and Cabinet-level travel includes a bedroom with a queen-size bed, showers, a kitchen, four large flat-screen televisions, and a bar, according to images of the aircraft obtained by NBC News.
…Whitehouse asked, “So it is being refurbished. What kind of deportee justifies being flown out of the country in a luxury jet with a bedroom and accommodations like this?”
Even some Republicans were calling for her ouster and that may have been the trigger for Trump to dump her.
She can now spend more time doing the thing she does best and loves, shooting puppies. I hope everyone who might get a visit from her keeps their pets out of sight.
Donald Trump on Thursday announced he was replacing Kristi Noem as the homeland security secretary, capping weeks of bipartisan complaints about her leadership after immigration agents killed two US citizens and reports emerged that she was involved in a personal relationship with a top deputy.
…After federal agents deployed to Minneapolis killed Renee Good and then, weeks later, Alex Pretti, Noem accused both US citizens of being involved in “domestic terrorism”. But the allegations appeared to fly in the face of what was known about both’s participation in anti-ICE protests, and Democrats, along with some Republicans, called for Noem to resign after Pretti’s death.
Simultaneously, reports began to emerge of turmoil at the department and Noem engaging in a personal relationship with Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who is her senior adviser, despite both being married.
In February, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report into her leadership of the department that found Noem and Lewandowski had done little to obfuscate their personal relationship, while berating staff and administering polygraph tests to those they did not trust.
The pair had been traveling on a luxury 737 Max jet equipped with a private cabin, which the department has been seeking to acquire for around $70m for “high-profile deportations”. In one instance, Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot who left a blanket belonging to Noem on a plane, but then reinstated him because there was no one else to fly them back.
Of course Trump cannot admit that he picked such a loser so he has given her a make-believe job.
Noem, who Trump said “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”, would become special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas”, a security initiative Trump said he planned to announce over the weekend.
That is of course a lie.
While this is good news, we knew that Trump would appoint an equally bad replacement and sure enough he has picked a spectacularly dim bulb in senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Mullin has been in the news a lot recently trying to defend Trump’s war with Iran and doing a laughably bad job, such as saying in one breath that the attack on Iran is a war and then in the very next breath denying that it is a war. The ability to contradict himself and not realize it makes him perfect to work for Trump.
But since he has been on TV a lot, his name must have been on the forefront of Trump’s famously short attention span which would explain why he was chosen.
And so the clown car rolls on …
I dont understand this. All the details specified should have given Noem an even bigger position in this administration.
#1
I could hear the “Hooray” all the way to Sweden. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Deepak Shetty @1:
Her unique skills should require giving her a more strategic posting…like the Azores!
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(I stole the joke from a Nixon-era issue of MAD featuring Spiro Agnew. Of course, Agnew was basically competent if rather corrupt. Today we would pray for leaders that are like that)
@1 Deepak Shetty: The final straw was likely her running a 200 million advertising campaign for the DHS that was a self promotion campaign to a large extent. Not the spending 200 million of course, the DHS has wasted more then that. The problem was running a publicity campaign without including Trump.
# 3
The next that should be targeted is Hegseth.
Not only did the bombing kill more than a hundred schoolgirls (although recent satellite images showed the school was separated from the nearby naval installation by a wall).
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The US submarine that sank a frigate knew the frigate had no munitions on board since it was returning from an international exercise.
Afterwards, the submarine just sailed away, despite a treaty from the 1970s requiring ships to provide succor.
Even during WWII the Royal Navy would rescue sailors from the Kriegsmarine, and vice versa.
Hegseth’s submarine just left the sailors to drown, even though the nearest Iranian vessels were more than a thousand miles away.
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This is not the first Hegseth war crimes. The attack on small civilian boats in the Caribbean without evidence and without any attempts to board them are murder.
@birgerjohansson
Way back when , I was stunned when Americans voted for George Bush Jr twice!. Good times.
@JM
Plus she’s not blonde.
The Trump regime is rule by meme. A great deal of what comes out of them sounds like a mix of government policy and text you might read after clicking on an ad banner that includes a phrase like “That One Wierd Trick That Lets You Do Whatever You Want!”
They think it’s cute and clever to argue over what a word means as if it’s detached from the real world. I’ve only seen two places where people argue over terms like this. It’s when someone is making a very lousy excuse or when they’re arguing over the meaning of a term in a game. Both are flippant, trivializing nonsense and no one in their right mind should put up with that around life and death decisions.
A few days ago I saw a comment somewhere that said, if we are very lucky, Noem will turn out to be the worst appointee of this misadministration. If we are unlucky, it will be Hegseth. If we are very unlucky, it will be RFK Jr. If we are *extremely* unlucky, it will be Hegseth again. Those are the ones to fear and get rid of. Well, one down.