Soon-to-be former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is making a last-ditch attempt to salvage her image after President Donald Trump fired her.
Noem had “grievances” with the Trump White House, the right-wing outlet the Daily Caller reported. One administration official told the outlet that “Noem told Trump and his White House that she was not getting the support she needed.”
Still, another White House official refuted Noem’s framing, saying, “It’s laughable that Kristi is trying to blame her own self-inflicted issues on someone else. The issues that led to Kristi’s replacement were a result of her own wrongdoings, not a lack of support from the White House.”
Noem’s supposed “grievances” reported by the Daily Caller largely contradict widespread reporting that her ouster was caused entirely by her own doing.
Even Fox News reported that Noem’s ouster was due to “‘a combination of her many unfortunate leadership failures, from Minnesota, to the ad campaign, to the allegations of an affair’” with adviser Corey Lewandowski.
“So the combination of those factors that tipped the president’s decision to elevate Markwayne Mullin into this position and get him confirmed,” Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich reported on air Thursday.
Noem was fired via a Trump Truth Social post on Thursday, marking the end of a tumultuous year at DHS under her leadership.
It has been widely reported that the final straw for Trump was her spending $220 million on an advertising campaign that prominently featured her on horseback in her native South Dakota.
In congressional testimony, Noem insisted that Trump approved the ad, comments that reportedly enraged the president, who says he was left in the dark about the ad.
“I never knew anything about it,” Trump told Reuters on Thursday.
She made repeated lies to justify the killing of two Americans in Minneapolis, which also got under Trump’s skin as he did not like the negative press she and DHS were bringing to his administration.
Trump gave her a new phony job, Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said he will reveal more information about on Saturday.
Even after she was canned, Noem is still shamelessly sucking up to the president, gushing over her new made-up gig in a post on X.
“Thank you @POTUS Trump for appointing me as the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” she said.
