Disgraced former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to spin President Donald Trump’s decision to fire her by claiming that she plotted with him to effectively can herself.
“I know it seemed that way to the American public, but the president and I had been talking about it for about a week or two before that,” Noem told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Tuesday of her March dismissal.
The former secretary, whose habit of cosplaying as an immigration agent during her tenure at DHS earned her the nickname ‘ICE Barbie’, went on to claim that both she and the president “knew there might be a transition, and we had conversations about it.” She added that she had also spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio about her imminent firing.
“I appreciate both of them wanting to keep me a part of the team, the valuable asset [sic] and knowledge that I have, that I bring to the table, and my chance to be involved with this administration, to do good work, is really important to the Western Hemisphere,” she told Bartiromo.
Noem has since moved on to a new gig as “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” heading up a security initiative so freshly invented that even the administration has struggled to explain what the job actually involves. Trump reportedly conjured up the idea the same day he fired Noem, with its chief achievement to date being a summit at one of the president’s golf clubs.
Her recollection of her firing is perhaps rosier than the actual sequence of events would suggest. Critics blasted Noem from almost the moment she was confirmed for running Homeland Security like a one-woman marketing operation—posing with loaded guns beside enforcement officers, turning up to briefings in full tactical gear, and trailing a constant stream of in-house promotional footage.
In one particularly memorable March 2025 episode, she toured El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison while wearing an ICE cap and a roughly $50,000 gold Rolex, filming herself in front of caged detainees.
Rumors also swirled throughout her tenure that she was engaged in an extramarital affair with her advisor, Corey Lewandowski, with whom she repeatedly traveled on a luxury Boeing 737 MAX leased at taxpayer expense, which the Daily Beast’s sister Substack PunchUp reported DHS was set to buy for $108 million.
Lewandowski is currently under investigation for allegations of contract rigging in the department. Noem’s husband of three decades, Bryon Noem, is meanwhile reported to have been living a secret online double life, paying thousands of dollars to women in a fetish subculture known as “bimbofication.”
Those scandals unfolded as Noem charged ahead with delivering Trump’s campaign promises of a nationwide immigration purge. The administration carried out dramatic, made-for-TV raids across multiple U.S. cities, almost all of them Democratic strongholds, as part of a pledge to remove the “worst of the worst” migrant criminal offenders. Statistics have since shown that fewer than a quarter of detainees had any criminal record at all.
Things became terminal for Noem in January when federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during protests against immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. Trump immediately dispatched border czar Tom Homan, who had warred with Noem behind the scenes throughout her tenure, to the city, which was widely seen as a rebuke to the secretary.
The end eventually came the week of March 3, after a bruising Senate Judiciary hearing. Sen. John Kennedy repeatedly pressed Noem on a roughly $220 million taxpayer-funded DHS ad campaign that featured her riding horseback through the South Dakota wilderness, singing her department’s praises.
Noem insisted that Trump had not only known about the advertisement but had, in fact, actively approved it. The president was reportedly furious. He immediately began canvassing allies and, as Noem arrived at an event in Nashville on March 5, phoned her directly to deliver the news. A Truth Social post naming her successor went up the same day.
Noem’s replacement at DHS, former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, has said since taking on the role that one of his chief aims is basically to ensure the department is no longer in the headlines every single day, reversing many of his predecessor’s policies and firing a number of her appointees.
“I think he’s doing a good job,” Noem told Bartiromo through gritted teeth Tuesday of Mullin’s stewardship, adding: “He’s got a lot of help, and that’s wonderful.”
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