Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is firing away at Republican Sen. Thom Tillis for bashing her disastrous tenure leading the agency.
Tillis, who is retiring from the Senate at the end of his term this year, has clashed with certain elements of the Trump administration’s agenda. While he did vote to confirm Noem, he has since become highly critical of her disastrous tenure leading DHS.
During an appearance on 60 Minutes, Tillis was asked about his outburst at Noem during a Senate hearing in March, just days before President Donald Trump fired her.
“I’m not very often that angry. But when I’m angry, I believe there’s a reason behind it, and people should listen,” he explained of the moment.
Correspondent Ross Douthat replied, “What were you thinking then? What had gone wrong with her tenure?”
“I was thinking about the $200 million that the Department of Homeland Security was spending on an ad campaign with her riding a horse,” he said
Her department spent $220 million on a glamorous advertising campaign that prominently featured her riding horseback in her native South Dakota. In addition to the high price tag, the contract came under scrutiny because Noem’s former spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin’s husband, Ben Yoho, stood to gain financially from it, as his firm was paid as a subcontractor on the ad campaign.
Tillis added that he was also “thinking about her calling people that were shot, potentially domestic terrorists. That’s proven not to be true.”
DHS had tried to brand Minnesota residents Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were killed at the hands of federal immigration agents, as domestic terrorists. After immense public backlash to the assertions, DHS quietly stopped referring to them as such.
But Noem, who has been banished from the Cabinet to the fake role of Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, has not taken Tillis’ critiques lightly, writing a long rant online trying to set things straight.
“Thom Tillis wants to debate taxpayer dollars, so let’s have that debate,” she began.
She proclaimed that every deportation “ costs the American taxpayer about $18,000” and that under her leadership “millions chose to self-deport.”
“Under my leadership at DHS, encouraging self-deportation saved taxpayers over $40 billion and allowed law enforcement to pursue other dangerous criminals on our streets. That doesn’t even include the costs avoided when people decided not to enter our country illegally in the first place. Tillis complains about advertising costs but conveniently ignores the taxpayer’s savings,” she said.
Noem also said that under her leadership DHS “cut $15 billion in lucrative contracts that the same good old boys’ companies had benefited from for years. On my watch, they had to answer for how they spent Americans’ money.”
Noem did not mention that, at the same time, her agency awarded hundreds of millions in contracts that have come under intense scrutiny over perceived conflicts of interest.
Most recently, she has faced scrutiny for awarding around $464 million for 10 unused aircraft in the final days of her tenure. The contracts were awarded to a company run by political donor William Walters, who has given to pro-Trump causes including a PAC associated with Noem.
