Cooking Cowgirl Kristi
Sacrificing underbosses, so MAGA doesn't have to blame The Boss
O Kristi, we hardly knew ye! Actually, that’s not true. We knew ye quite well, or at least better than we’d wish to. We didn’t have much choice. Mainly, because you were always in our grills with your Mar-a-Lago face, whether in $220 million taxpayer-funded sizzle reels, or in ICE-Barbie-wear. Though I was personally partial to your cowgirl outfits, because I like a cabinet secretary who ain’t afraid to ride cowgirl. (That’s what Corey Lewandowski said!)
Like a third-degree facial burn, Noem was uncomfortably visible. She left her mark on the Department of Homeland Security (or a permanent scar, if you prefer), which is usually a relatively low-key post. Can anyone even name another DHS Secretary off the top of their head? Can you recall anything about Tom Ridge or Jeh Johnson? Probably not. But then, those guys didn’t wear saucy cowgirl get-ups (at least not on the clock). Or purchase two Gulfstream G700 private jets for $200 million on the public’s dime, complete with luxe master bedroom for mile-high “meetings.” Or write memoirs proudly featuring anecdotes about shooting their puppy in cold blood in a gravel pit as proof that they can make those tough leadership choices. Or hold press conferences defending their troops gunning down protesters in the street, as if human beings were untrainable wirehair pointers or something. (RIP, Cricket, and Renée Good, and Alex Pretti.)
This week, after Noem became the first Trump cabinet official to get fired in his second term (you have to be a pretty rancid pollutant to get tossed from this cesspool), there are already lots of troubling questions about her named successor, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, a man whose first name can’t make up its mind. A man who I have uncharitably called “the dumbest member of the Senate” in the past. (Which is not to slight Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville, who always provide stiff competition.) There are troubling questions like:
1. Will Markwayne ever get his two first names legally separated, since they remind everybody that he is a ridiculous person who sounds like an extra in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby?
2. Will Markwayne have to sleep with Corey Lewandowski? Is that a DHS job requirement?
3. If yes, can he do so under Kristi’s security blankie, the one that got that military pilot fired? Or does she get to take that with her to her new post as Plenopotentiary Sneeze-Guardian Of The Hemispheric Salad Bar Of Liberty, or whatever BS title Trump just handed her as a now-go-play-in-the-road parting gift.
But though I’ve already mentioned several lowlights of her tenure, I don’t wish to inflict some comprehensive review. Which would be an unnecessary exercise. Because one of the beautiful things about the Trump administration (perhaps the only one?) is that you never have to get bogged down in the particulars of the old corruption, because new corruption reliably presents itself each and every week.
Though I often find it unintentionally hilarious when, after Trump finally throws someone over — in Noem’s case, after several hundred violations of ethics and/or good taste — and it’s safe to condemn one of their own, MAGAbots tend to jump on a weakened member of the herd with both hooves, practically salivating for a good culling, as if they knew this person needed eliminated all along on faulty character grounds.
When a Trumpster relative of mine heard the news of Noem’s defenestration — a relative with unimpeachable personal morals, but who has made excuses for Trump for everything from his multiple affairs, including with a porn star (“let he who is without sin…”) to invading the Capitol while pretending an election was stolen (“why didn’t Nancy Pelosi call for security?”) — he told me, “You need to take her to the front of the Capitol and stone her.” Oh, okay. Never heard him speak like that about Noem when she was say, accusing Alex Pretti of domestic terrorism before his dead body even cooled.
And then there was Fox’s Laura Ingraham, who consistently defended Noem when she was pilloried by critics, but who is now demanding to know, “Why didn’t {Trump} fire her right away?”
You could witness such behavior with every MAGA rubber-stamper/former Noem champion from Sen. Lindsey Graham to Sen. John Kennedy, the latter of whom’s line of questioning in this week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing allegedly provided the noose with which Noem lynched herself when she claimed Trump signed off on her $220 million self-promotion ads. (Trump said he had no knowledge of it.) Kennedy, who so wants you to know he’s folksy that he likely practices his Earl-Long delivery in the mirror, told reporters that Noem was “deader than fried chicken.”
Yeah, fine. But unspoken in all of their late-hit criticisms of Noem is that she wasn’t picked in spite of being corrupt, but because she signaled all along that she was utterly corruptible. After all, she was picked by a President who has been indicted four times, who tried to overthrow his own country, who has enriched himself by $4 billion since starting his second term, and who has never met a rule that he believes applies to him. Which makes it laughable that he’s now demanding to pick Iran’s government after launching his war of aggression that he forgot to sell to the American people or our allies before he started dropping bombs. How’s he going to pick a desirable Supreme Leader in a foreign land when he’s the same guy who picked Pistol-Fingers Pete Hegseth in his own? (A man who thinks his Stars’n’Stripes pocket square qualifies him to run the Pentagon — right into the ground.) Has Trump actually met his cabinet? At least it’s gotta be worth a few laughs to the ayatollahs.
So I’d submit that a lot of the MAGA aggression we’re seeing directed at Noem is of the same variety I diagnosed four months ago in a Q&A that ran in these pages, when scores of MAGA podcasters were at each other’s throats. (They still are.) Which goes like this:
And this is much of the reason I think the MAGAbots now spend more time clawing out each other’s eyes. There’s a lot of displaced aggression. Like when your boss humiliates you at work, but instead of telling him off or quitting, you go home and kick the dog. Or Candace Owens. Not that Candace Owens doesn’t deserve a good kicking. Sorry — I shouldn’t speak that way about the mentally ill. But, except for say Nick Fuentes, who has a lot of other problems (being a Hitler-loving incel, for starters), but who will actually call bullshit on Trump these days (even if he ignored the truth for a decade prior), they’re almost all too cowardly to criticize The King directly. So they criticize each other instead. Though I applaud that impulse, since I’m truly enjoying their circular firing squad. They all deserve each other.
The bottom line? We still have three years left of this madness. Possibly more, if Trump decides to call off elections. So — with an ailing economy now set to get even worse with Iran-War-induced oil price hikes, with a litany of broken promises to point to (anyone remember when Trump was going to fix inflation on day one and not get us into any more sticky Middle Eastern wars?), with a purported pedophile-slayer who for some reason keeps showing up in the Epstein files — here’s hoping MAGA can find it in their dark, brittle, culture-warrior hearts to stop monkeying around. To quit blaming the underbosses like Noem, and start blaming The Boss, whose corruption the underbosses emulate. That’s why they’re hired in the first place.
Bonus Track: Speaking of crazy cowgirls, here’s one I like. Sierra Ferrell (and Mitch Polzak) looking like they just emerged from a David Lynch film to sing “I Can Drive You Crazy.” The girl can wail, while slathering some fine fiddle over this song, too.