Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy is much better known for demolishing Democrats than ridiculing Republicans, but Kristi Noem might be the exception.
The South Dakota Republican and the now-soon-to-be-former Cabinet official made headlines Wednesday as Kennedy used a Senate hearing to probe insistently about a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign that made Noem out to be some kind of heroine for Homeland Security.
And only a day later, Noem’s ouster was making headlines of its own.
Kennedy’s questioning was polite — almost excruciatingly so — but his skepticism was on full display over Noem’s answers when it came to whether President Donald Trump was fully behind the $220 million ad campaign.
Check it out here:
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“Sorry to interrupt,” he said at one point. “But the president approved, ahead of time, your spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?”
“Yes,” Noem replied.
“He did,” Kennedy answered.
There was some crosstalk before Kennedy — scourge of Democrats during President Joe Biden’s administration — dropped the hammer hard.
“I’m not saying you’re not telling the truth. It’s just hard for me to believe,” he said. “Knowing the president as I do, that you said, ‘Mr. President, here’s some ads I’ve cut and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that…”
(Kennedy’s Southern upbringing was showing here. There aren’t many ways a gentleman can call a lady a liar to her face, but prefacing a statement with “I’m not saying you’re not telling the truth…” is one of them.)
Kennedy also questioned how the contracts for the ads were awarded, strongly implying the money went to Noem insiders.
But it was very likely the moment that Kennedy brought Trump into his questions and Noem included Trump in her answers that her career in Trump’s Cabinet effectively ended.
On Thursday, Trump announced that Noem will be out of her post at Homeland Security and replaced by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin effective March 31.
The statement on the Truth Social platform came after Reuters published a report saying Trump had denied Noem’s version of the ad campaign’s genesis, and after Kennedy told CBS News correspondent Alan He that Trump had called him after the hearing.
“You folks know him. You can ask him yourselves, but put it this way, his recollection and her recollection are different…” Kennedy said, according to a post from He on social media platform X.
Of course, Noem has her version of events.
Given the amount of abuse she’s taken from Democrats and the establishment media for her energy in pushing Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration — Kristi Noem is probably detested more by the left than any other woman in Trump’s orbit besides Melania — it’s not at all impossible that she thought the ad campaign was justified. It’s possible she thought Trump thought so, too.
But it’s just as clear that Trump doesn’t see it that way — and has gone out of his way to make that publicly known. And that meant Noem was out.
None of this is to say Noem still isn’t on Team Trump, at least officially. In his statement, Trump also announced that Noem would become his administration’s “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.”
Whatever that’s supposed to be, here’s hoping it’s more productive than former Vice President Kamala Harris’ “root causes” fiasco when it came to illegal immigration into the United States from Latin America.
But even if it is, it’s still a consolation prize that likely isn’t going to do much to take away the sting for a Cabinet official who just got very publicly cashiered.
And it looks like John Kennedy’s questioning was the cause.
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