Kristi Noem Seals Her Reputation as COVID’s Cartoon Villain

President Trump was quarantined in the White House, but a trio of MAGA celebrities as strange as any three characters from the Star Wars bar was out there on his behalf on Thursday.

The star and perhaps most determinedly deluded figure in Trumpland was South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. She joined former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and one-time Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in addressing an overflow Operation MAGA event at a VFW hall in a Florida city whose mayor had just tested positive for COVID-19.

Noem’s home state now leads the country in new COVID cases per capita, but she remains the leading champion of unconscionably selfish recklessness masquerading as freedom. She is the bare-faced counterpart to pro-mask Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was the target of a far-right kidnapping plot busted up on Thursday by the FBI. Whitmer had begun successfully flattening her state’s pandemic curve in April when Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”