Kristi Noem played “Hot Mama” as the walk-up song for her formal introduction at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in January 2025. President Trump had put her in charge of his signature campaign promise—the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history—and Noem took a fast, flashy approach to the job. She dressed as a Border Patrol agent and an ICE officer, and rode horseback at Mount Rushmore in ads. She flew to El Salvador and posed in front of a prison cell crammed with tattooed inmates. She made no apologies for aggressive enforcement tactics on American streets, even those that likely broke the law, or for the deaths of two U.S. citizens who opposed her approach.But it wasn’t the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year that finally cost Noem her job today, making her the first ousted Cabinet secretary of Trump’s second term. Instead, it was her self-promotion.Noem’s standing was already shaky when she went to Capitol Hill to testify this week. On Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican, asked whether Trump himself had approved Noem’s $220 million ad campaign that featured her urging migrants to self-deport. Noem said yes, and defended the ads as “effective.”The ads “were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy told Noem, saying that she put Trump “in a terribly awkward spot.” He was implying the commission of a cardinal sin for a Trump Cabinet member: seeking to outshine the president. Kennedy told reporters today that he had spoken with Trump. “Her version of the truth and the president’s version of the truth are decidedly different,” Kennedy said.Noem had been saying for more than a year that the idea for the ads came from Trump himself. But with public opinion souring on Trump’s mass deportations, the messaging campaign that Noem touted as a success—and the no-bid contracts behind it—had come under suspicion from lawmakers. A person familiar with the decision to fire Noem told us that the president was upset about her attempt to pass the blame for the ad campaign onto him, and for her equivocation on the questions about her alleged romantic relationship with Corey Lewandowski, who has been working at DHS as her de facto chief of staff.“Replacing Kristi was based on the culmination of her many unfortunate leadership failures including the fallout in Minnesota, the ad campaign, the allegations of infidelity, the mismanagement of… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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