Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shot back after a Democratic senator mocked her for having shot dead a disobedient puppy.
Noem, fired from the department in March after 13 scandal-ridden months, was quick to reply after Minnesota’s Tina Smith trolled her on X with a photo of herself cuddling a small dog and the caption: “Don’t worry buddy, Kristi Noem isn’t around anymore.”
“Oh, but I am,” the former DHS chief wrote, before adding, debatably, “I love puppies.”
In her 2024 memoir No Going Back, Noem, then governor of South Dakota, wrote that she had “hated” her 14-month-old puppy Cricket because the “worthless” dog had disrupted a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens one by one.
She cheerfully admitted in the book that her solution had been to march the animal into a gravel pit and shoot it dead. The backlash killed off her chances of becoming Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, though he was apparently so taken by her ruthless personality that he chose her to carry out his nationwide immigration crackdown instead.
She threw herself into the job, earning the nickname ICE Barbie for her cosplaying stunts alongside immigration and Border Patrol agents, but fell foul of Trump and his henchmen and became the first Cabinet casualty of his second term.
Controversies, gaffes and blunders that dogged her time in office famously included splurging $220 million on an advertising campaign featuring herself, her decision to purchase herself a multi-million dollar luxury jet with taxpayer money, writing off the fatal shooting of two protesters, both U.S. citizens, as incidents of “domestic terrorism,” and reports of managerial carnage under her joint leadership with her adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski.
Trump eventually canned Noem in early March after a brutal, back-to-back grilling over those scandals at the Senate and House Judiciary committees. Even Republicans—like Sen. Thom Tillis, who pointedly noted that he trains dogs himself as he filleted her over the puppy-killing incident—publicly demanded her resignation.
Noem was replaced at Homeland Security by the former Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin. She has moved on to a freshly invented gig as “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.”
That post puts her at the head of a vaguely defined Western Hemisphere anti-cartel initiative which, as Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu has since noted, Trump “literally created a few hours” before naming her to it. Democratic strategist Bakari Sellers joked that he would serve as her deputy, “based in Wakanda.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Noem’s representatives for comment on this story.
