Kristi Noem Isn’t Courageous Enough To Run Homeland Security

Multiple outlets say, based largely on claims from CNN via anonymous sources, that President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his Homeland Security secretary. While Noem is certainly skilled at promoting herself, she doesn’t have the courage required for this role.

Numerous top aides fled Noem’s office after she lied to voters about sabotaging policies key to Trump’s win — policies acknowledging that men and women are different. Requiring men to stay out of women’s sports and sanctioning those who give sex shows to kids should have been easy for her to back as the governor of a deep-red non-border state.

But, as The Federalist reported, Noem chose to side against her own voters on behalf of some of her state’s biggest lobbyists in the corrupt health-industrial complex. That’s the same complex that Trump has promised he’s going to take down at the federal level with Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” team.

At the time, Noem’s “top advisor” had lobbying clients that included a state hospital system that profited from amputating the healthy genitals of minors. And when she was called out on this by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Noem’s defense was that she’s scared to engage in lawsuits on behalf of Americans’ obvious best interests.

It should go without saying that anyone who is scared of lawsuits should not be part of the Trump administration, especially anyone involved in combatting illegal immigration.

“If confirmed, Noem would oversee an agency with a wide-ranging mission,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “The department is responsible for natural disasters, cybersecurity and transportation security, in addition to its central role in immigration enforcement.”

Noem has an undeserved reputation for courage because she was the only governor not to shut down her state in the name of Covid. But that reputation is completely undeserved. The truth is, she attempted to get the power to shut down South Dakota, but the state legislature refused to give it to her.

She hasn’t been able to stand for much of anything as governor, which puts in doubt her ability to take a hard line at DHS. Indeed, directly pertinent to the DHS job, Noem was one of the first governors to accept poorly vetted foreigners that are often falsely labeled “refugees.”

It’s true: Homeland Security is a thankless job. Corporate media will drag any Homeland secretary over the coals. But Noem doesn’t have the constitution to respond like Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and tell corporate media they can go to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks. Instead, when she’s rightly asked about serious leadership failures, she hits her fainting couch, lies to cover her tracks, and whines about “cancel culture.”

Noem is a coward who back-stabs her own party. She went on a sabotage spree against members of her own party who showed she was telling voters she was against trans insanity while working behind the scenes to keep it going.

There’s already enough of that kind of drama complicating Trump’s policy priorities thanks to anti-Trump Republicans populating the House and Senate. No one with that track record should be rewarded with a high position like a Cabinet secretary. On principle, anyone who backs down and lies about it when things get difficult is not fit for any administration, especially a Trump administration.

Noem’s track record is not the behavior of a leader serious enough to helm an agency that has turned the federal antiterrorism apparatus on normal Americans, labeling stances such as support for life from conception and responsibly owning guns as signs of “domestic extremism.” Someone who shoots the messengers exposing her double-dealing is exactly the wrong person to put in charge of a counterterrorism apparatus already targeting Americans over their constitutionally protected speech.

Trump previously put a bobblehead at Homeland Security, and it resulted in the Anonymous book and the moronic Miles Taylor. Cabinet jobs are too important for weak women who are in politics because they look like a model. People like that should leave politics to those with the courage to tell the truth and act on its behalf.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist. Her new book with Regnery is “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America.” A happy wife and the mother of six children, her ebooks include “Classic Books For Young Children,” and “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media including Tucker Carlson, CNN, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Joy is also the cofounder of a high-performing Christian classical school and the author and coauthor of classical curricula. Her traditionally published books also include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.