GOP Senators Suddenly Discover Kristi Noem Is a Problem

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein. I'm managing editor at the book. I'm here with JVL and Andrew

Egger. And we've been watching a pretty spicy at times hearing with Christy Nome at the

Senate Judiciary Committee this morning. Spicy in that there was at least one unexpected

Republican who grilled the secretary very hard. And then there was a very theatrical moment

with Senator Tom Tillis that I know JVL wants to merit and not involve talk of castrated

goats and dog killing and all that stuff. Before we get into that, subscribe to the feed,

really appreciate it. So, Andrew, you've been watching this with me. What's your,

what's like that 30,000-foot takeaway from this hearing that happened this morning?

Yeah, so we know, we knew what we were kind of expecting to get from most Republicans, right?

It was come in, talk about how bad the Biden administration was on immigration, talk about how

good of a job you guys are doing. And we got plenty of that. But like you say, there were a couple

somewhat notable defections. We were not really surprised that Tom Tillis, who is lame ducked out

and has a pit of reputation now for like letting his freak flag fly a little bit on some of these

Republicans. Not super surprised that he went after Nome, but very surprised by sort of the depth

of the attack and the sort of intensity of it. That's not really his bag usually is getting all

sort of like bulgee-eyed and spittle flecked and just mad. And then even more surprising

was what we saw from Senator Kennedy, who's also Republican, and who is very much not like a

thorn in the side of the administration on pretty much anything. Not just going after Nome,

but going after her pretty aggressively for a lot of the same reasons, people like us have been

criticizing her leadership for quite some time, talking about just the absolute sort of

disaster of enforcement in Minneapolis that led to the killings of Alex Prety and Renee Good,

and really trying at sometimes it seemed like to drive a wedge between Nome and the White House

in some of the questions he was asking. So that was sort of unexpected as well.

Let's play the clip of him, Kennedy, asking about the use of ads. So the background here is

DHS has ungodly amounts of money to spend because of the big beautiful bill. Like insane amounts

of money to spend. And I actually saw a data point on this ad impact, which tracks all this stuff,

right, all the ad spending money that happens over the course of the election. They looked at

expenditures today in the midterm election. And by far and away, the top overall advertiser

for the midterm election cycle was the US Department of Homeland Security, 79 million dollars in ads.

They run the next closest was Tom Steyer, Governor of California at $58 million.

Anyway, so Kennedy is like, why are you running all these ads in which you, Kristi Nome, are

basically front and center? Like this is the Trump administration's immigration

positions, be by deportations. Here's how it went. Let's play the video.

But the president approved ahead of time, you spending $220 million running TV ads across the

country in which you are featured prominently. Yes, sir. We went through the legal processes.

Did it correct? Did the president work with OMB? Yes. He did. Yes. Okay.

And one thing, Senator, I think, would be helpful to know is how effective that communications has

been that overwhelmingly effective in your name recognition. I mean, I personally just,

I mean, to me, it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot. And I just, I'm not saying you're

not telling the truth. It's just hard for me to believe. You know, I mean, president, as I do,

that you said, Mr. President, here's some ads I've cut, and I'm going to spend $220 million

running them, that he would have agreed to that. All right. So, JVL, what do you make of that?

How could he ever possibly have known? Christy, no, I would do this. Guys, I'm sorry. I don't

mean to short circuit this whole exercise here, but watching people who voted to confirm her,

right, suddenly get all chasty about pop, pop, pop, I know what I did. Go fuck yourselves.

That's basically how I feel about it. Go fuck yourself, Kennedy. And I'm sorry. And he's,

he's willing to take after Christy, no, because he's too shy to go after Secretary Kennedy. He was

bringing back measles. I'm sorry, but these people are menaces, and they should get zero credit

for now, but laterally in a committee meeting where they think that maybe they're actually helping

Trump by separating the weak one from the herd. And, you know, maybe, maybe if they,

it's only they don't blame Donald Trump or say that the mission is bad or say the boy,

gee, that's what shouldn't have given you guys $11 to get $1,000,000. It's only they don't do that.

Then they're being responsible people working in government.

Right. I mean, Kennedy's point was he went after her for the ads that she's run, and whether or not

she was being unfair to Steven Miller. That was the other point of attention. How could you,

how could you throw Mr. Miller under the bus? You know, that was it. So I wasn't like, you know,

now he did. I will give him, I'm not giving credit. I will say he did ask about the decision to call

Renee Good and Alex pretty domestic terrorists. And, and, and, no, I'm said, what was it?

It was a gruesome distinction. She said, I didn't call him domestic terrorists, but I said they

may have engaged in acts of domestic terrorism as if there's a fucking difference.

Yes. She said that. She said a bunch of different things. She said 15 different things. I don't

know if we have clips of this, but, but it was it was some of that. It was some of, well, look,

you know, it was a chaotic situation. And I was responding to reports from the ground. And,

and you know, I can't imagine what her parents went or what their parents went through. I was just

relying on what my agents told me. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. That was it. Well, if so,

have those agents been fired because they lied to you and made you look like a fucking idiot?

Or just say, I regret saying it. So if, if she was relying on the things from the agents,

older than the agents lied to her, and are they being held accountable? Are there, are there

HR proceedings against them? No, we could play Klobuchar because I think Klobuchar pushed her

specifically on this. And to your point, Javier, she never once says, I regret doing it.

Ever. No, ever. She just said, well, I was giving bad information. Narian apology never saying,

well, you know, we're looking into it. And I shouldn't have jumped to hasty conclusions or

anything like that. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretty, when I spoke to Alex's

parents, they told me that you calling him a domestic terrorist. This was directly from them

the day after he was killed, a nurse in our VA, Alex, one of the most hurtful things they could

ever imagine was said by you about their son. Do you have anything you want to say to Alex

Pretty's parents? We were relying in the hours after that incident that was so horrific.

On information, we were getting from a graduate agent. But I would say to the parents or to the

family of Renee Good, after you called them domestic terrorists. Can't even imagine what they

have gone through in the loss of their son, in the loss of their family members. But how about

specifically calling them domestic terrorists without any evidence of that?

Sure. I did. A man I did not call him a domestic terrorist. I said it appeared to be an incident of.

I think the parents saw it for way to less. You frozen faced fucking ghoul.

I mean, I'm sorry. And you know what? Clobo? Not doing the best job there, like not coming with the

actual receipts, not going at her hard, right? Not saying, oh, no, here's what you actually said.

They could have played the video. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm too hot for for you. I know that we're all

supposed to like be, you know, playing it cool. It's a cool medium for YouTube. This is, like,

this is unfucking believable. Right. It really does put just, I mean, like, it's all been happening

out there for days and days and weeks and weeks. And we've been swimming in it. All the horror that

has been coming out of Minneapolis, all of the just ridiculous decision-making that happened to

put those policies in place. And then just the just the unbelievable way that her department at

her leadership decided to respond in real time to all of these actions. I mean, I don't know,

JVL, I thought Clobo Char did a pretty good job of putting the specific question to her of look,

a horrible thing happened. And it was your people who did it. It was your people who killed

these citizens. But it wasn't just that they harmed the families of Alex Credit and Renee Good.

You harmed them. You harmed them by immediately getting right there and smearing them in this way.

And they said that that was actually maybe the most painful thing, seeing their government do that.

And I mean, what's she gonna say? I mean, like, she's she's there's a reason why some Republicans

want to hang her out to dry for this, right? I mean, there's a reason why it's not a matter of

credit, really. It's just it's just like the the the bloodless real politic of this thing.

Let me play a game. What is what if you asked what she what she's gonna say? Would it really

been that harmful to say we shouldn't have done it. We acted hastily. We spoke hastily. That would

have been harmful. Can't say that. I mean, not in Trump world, right? In Trump world, you can't ever

it's dominance politics and you cannot apologize. You cannot ever admit a mistake in Trump world.

That would get her fired. And we we've seen that. I mean, that's that's happened repeatedly in

this administration. You know, any lawyer who like gives an inch in a court setting or whatever

is immediately, you know, gets the shepherds crook and gets yanked out of there. The only thing

that is keeping Christy Nome in her job, despite the fact that everybody knows what a dumpster fire

she made of Minneapolis and has made of immigration enforcement all throughout the first year of

Trump's term. The only thing that is keeping in her in her job is the fact that Donald Trump

still gives her sort of like the divine imprimatur, right? I mean, she still has the mandate of heaven.

Even though so many people even in her own agency know that she's awful, they're gunning for her.

Corey has the mandate of heaven. Yes, exactly. Corey Lewandowski, who, you know, has an

interest day. Her very special advisor. Yes, exactly. They may or may not have a love plane. We

don't know. We don't know. That did come up today, by the way. They were asked about love. But

so she has only one mission, right? Her one mission is to continue to not lose the mandate of

heaven. And that's why you can't apologize. Even though everybody knows that you affect this

upside. But the context here. So here's, I want to just sort of hint at something that is in

the air, which is that DHS funding is frozen right now. Okay, they obviously have a boatload of

cash because of the big beautiful bell. And they're they're going to be fine. Ice is going to be

fine for sure. But DHS funding itself is frozen. Republicans turning on Nome in this context,

at least Kennedy until us that we're going to talk about in a second. I don't know. There

is a signal. There's some whiff up there that this is an effort for Republicans to try to

signal to Democrats on the hill. Hey, let if we get this person out, if we turn on this person too,

if we get new leadership at DHS, could we get to an agreement? That's that seems to me to be the

context here. Now, let's turn to Tillis because Tillis, look, it was heavy on theatrics. There were

some actual news breaks here in that he said, you know, he wants a DHS inspector general report,

which has been stimmed. He said he's going to hold any and blank nomination until he gets

a response. That's real. He says he will deny quorum on as many communities as I can denying a quorum

on committees until he gets a response after two weeks. That's real. Like, they need to actually

have these quorms. So those are real steps. Everything else was very theatrical and enjoyable.

Why don't we start? And I know where Javier is going to come down to this because Tillis did vote

for her. He did. And he only started speaking up once he decides to retire. Still, it was good

theater. So let's start with the dog. And then we'll get to the cover up. You should know that if

you're going out to a hunting lodge and you're putting peasants out and you're putting dogs out,

you don't take a puppy out there. A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager and dog years.

You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training.

And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough

choices. It's in your book. We could play it if we had time at that same watch hour. You killed a

goat and you killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly. You were a farmer. You don't

castrate a goat. They behave badly. You should have probably done that before. But my point is

those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. Not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.

I think it is unlike what happened in Minneapolis. Also, I'm not sure about the goat castration.

I'm just not my area of expertise engineer. We're debating what the protocols are on goat

constriction. JBL. Was that book out before her confirmation hearing? Yes, of course.

So now he views the information that he had prior to voting for her as

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Here's why I'm so just ramped up about this and so my court is all spiking, gentlemen.

It's because these assholes sit up there and rage without ever considering saying,

I can't believe I voted for you. I made a huge mistake. I got snowed in by you. You are utterly

incompetent. You should never have been in this job. The Senate failed in its mission and I

personally in my job because you know what? Tillis is retiring. He has nothing left to gain.

This is what I'm saying. It's the other lack of personal responsibility for a thing they helped

happen. I just can't count on that. I'm sorry. Nance totally fair. He wants her fired but he's not

taking any responsibility for being there in the first place. By the way, you know a bunch of

Democrats voted for her too. Did Federman? I'm sure Federman. Federman. Tim Cain.

Tim Cain did. Melissa Slotkin. Maggie Hisson. Kim. Peter's. No. I should have looked that up. We

got to ask about that. I did. I don't know. Any of them have any second thoughts about this?

We should have brought anything to say to the country for helping to put this woman in

that job. Can I say one thing about that? Because I think this is pretty illustrative of like just

something that's constantly happening with the Trump administration where like everything is so

bad all the time that like things people get passes on things and things slip through that are

like totally unconscionable on the merits. Like if you think back to the confirmation, you know,

when Trump was putting his cabinet together, we were all hair on fire about Robert Reff Kennedy

Jr. We were all hair on fire about Matt Gaetz. I don't remember even remember who some of the other

like truly Pete Hegseth was one of the was one of the tall city gathered. Tulsi Gabbard. And

in the. Yeah, exactly. There were there were there were several in kind of in the midst of all of that.

You know, it's like, well, and then Donald Trump, you know, who who got reelected to do like the

mass deportations. I guess he gets to put somebody in charge to do mass duplications. I guess we're

glad it's not actually like Cori Lundowski who's going to be running the department of security.

It's just this governor who, you know, CPAC really likes whatever waver through. And like it's not

that it's it's not that there was not plenty of evidence to suggest that she was kind of an insane

person before. I mean, you talk about everything she put in that book. You talk about, you know,

the sort of like a board of pre presidential campaigns you kind of tried to run. I mean, like there

was there were there were warning signs. But like when when you compared her to those lunatics

in in advance, you can kind of see how these people have some of these people got there. The problem

is like that was already working with such a skewed view of reality because you were comparing her

to some of like the biggest cranks in human history who also all got through by the way other

than Matt Gaetz. Here's a little trivia. Who is Donald Trump's first DHS secretary? I don't

not have pronounced her name. Nielsen or no, that was second. The first one was Kelly. No.

John Kelly. First one. Yeah. Look at that. Wow. He went on slide there too. And Nielsen,

yeah. So Kelly, Nielsen ended up becoming soft spoken Trump critics. Yeah. I mean, am I wrong

that there should be some accountability for for Democrats who voted for this? Because one of

those that happened is we get into confirmation world. And I was like, well, I can't vote against

all of them because that'll look so partisan. I got to find someone I can say yes to. And you know

what? Like if you're if you were a list of slotkin, you said yes to this, you should have your

face rubbed in it. I think you should have to answer for it and explain why you did it and why

you think you were wrong. If you think you're wrong, maybe a little slotkin stands by that vote.

And then what she's going to do differently going forward in her approach to

handling the Trump administration. This is the type of vote that if you have aspirations for

higher office beyond the Senate, let's say you want to learn for president, it will be held

against you. People will absolutely hammer you for this vote. There will be consequences.

And you're probably right. It would be Hoover to get ahead of it now and just be like,

if you're a slotkin, just be like, biggest regret in my life, that type of thing. But this will

haunt her for sure. But this is how you stop people from doing this stuff in the future.

Right. I mean, if you're this isn't purely about like just getting, you know, accountability for

the sake of accountability, although that's nice. It would be nice to have some of that. It feels like

we live in a world with almost zero accountability for anybody. But if the idea is this whole process

is broken because you have people in the United States Senate who simply do not take their jobs

seriously when it comes to advising consent and confirmation of cabinet level nominees.

The only way to do that is to punish people who treat it like a joke.

Right. There's a number. I'm sort of confused with this because I'm looking up the

roll call. Now there are seven people who did seven centers who did not vote. And I can't, why?

I'm just rap. I can't remember this. I will note that. Raphael Warnart was one of them.

Brian Schatz was another one who did not vote. Somebody from Hawaii.

Yeah. Brian Schatz. Yeah. Let me just close with it. Because I want to give, I know we're being

rightfully hard on tennis for not doing more and not explaining the votes. But I do want to give

at least a little bit of kudos to Tillis. Because there are ways to go out of office that you can

just slink and say, you know, and I'm going to just get a lobbying gig and I'm not going to

rock the boat. And, you know, I got to still work in this town. I don't want to like fuck over

Trump and all that stuff, whatever. This guy at least is putting some elbow grease into the criticisms

here. And he has spoken out unlike a lot of his other retiring Republican colleagues about what

happened in Minnesota. Okay. And like he's been very, very critical of this. I want to play him

talking about the cover here because this was a moment where I don't know, maybe I'm a sucker for

the ship, but I generally thought that here's a guy who is pissed, who really doesn't like what

happened and want doesn't want to see it happen again. So let's play the clip and you can tell

me why I'm wrong. The way you're going about deporting them is wrong. The fact that you can't admit

to a mistake, which looks like under investigation, it's going to prove it. Miss good and Mr.

Pretty probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back.

Law enforcement needs to learn from that. You don't protect them by not looking after the facts.

Not only should the FBI be investigating it, but every single law enforcement agency in that

jurisdiction should be invited to it. So our law enforcement officers do not have this

podcast upon them. One of the reasons why ICE officers are having threats and damn the people

that threaten ICE officers because so many of them are doing a good job is because you've cast

a poll on them by acting like we should investigate things differently. Officer-involved shootings

have a formula that we should go through every time. The first part, yes. Am I wrong?

I mean, I genuinely struggle with this because you're not wrong. This is a case of defining

deviancy down, right? And so it's only when you compare him against the people who are doing

much, much worse that you start to say, well, then, you know, like, yeah, he's, and I guess everything

is relative, right? I mean, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And if you want more

people doing what Tom Tillis should do, then you shouldn't sit here like I am screaming at him.

I take all of that. But this isn't early days, you know, it's not 2017 when the future is still uncertain.

And we don't quite know where it's heading and maybe it won't be so bad. Like we do have masked

secret police running around the country abducting people and killing citizens. We do have journalists

being arrested. We do have an unconstitutional war going on. Like I feel like we know directionally

where this is all heading. And everyone's just kind of hoping that it works out fine, right?

But I don't know. Andrew, where are you on this? You are typically much more sensible than I am.

I just wanted to say, I don't know about that. I just wanted to say one thing about sort of the

direction of these of these things because because both Tillis and Kennedy do sort of the same thing

where they are kind of trying to like send Christy Nome out as the scapegoat bearing the sins of

the government into the wilderness, right? And Kennedy was a little bit more sort of like, you know,

blunt about it. He's like, how dare you impune our great Patriots like Stephen Miller. But even Tillis,

a little bit is doing that with that with the line about ice there where he's basically saying like,

look, like for the most part, this agency is doing exactly what we wanted to be doing. And it's,

you know, it's the brave men and women in the Patriots of ice. And it's really just Christy's fault

that things are bad. But like this kind of gets to what you were saying a minute ago, Sam, about

this actually being, and again, I don't know whether Tillis or Kennedy have this specifically in

their mind, but there does appear to be this effort to make her the scapegoat for all of this stuff.

And to cast her out instead of getting any of the totally obviously needed and like perfectly

reasonable and honestly kind of minor reforms to DHS that Democrats are demanding in order to

fund the agency, which is stuff like keep your body cams on and your masks off and wear a badge

and a uniform and like do targeted enforcement and don't randomly sweep up protesters and people

that you think look like they could be illegal because they're minorities. Like the idea that

this would be the pitch. Again, I don't know 100% that this is what Tillis or what Kennedy

is thinking, but that's kind of the upshot of these lines of attack, right? It's like let's all

agree that it's Christy who's the problem. And then we can get her out of there and ice can go

back to doing its great patriotic work without any of these reforms that Democrats have demanded.

And I think if Democrats were to accept that it would be so. That's such a good point, Andrew.

In a way, it makes it more dangerous, right? I mean, not everyone needs to be a crazy pants

accelerationist the way I am. But saying like, yes, all of this stuff is fundamentally good and we

should be doing it, but we should be doing it more quietly so that people don't get upset about it.

And so your sin, Christy Nome, is doing it publicly and making people upset. That's dangerous,

right? That is swapping out Bavino for home and Minneapolis while you're still doing all the

same stuff. And I don't know that that actually helps. No, probably doesn't help. All right. I have

one last thing I want to mention, but I'm going to leave it after this. Katie Brayt. Katie Brayt

had a very glossy New York Times piece written about her about how she could not stop thinking about

Liam Ramos, the five-year-old kid who was abducted from a school in Minneapolis. We talked to the

superintendent of the school district when we were up there and sent to Texas and had a huge

ordeal ended up back in Minneapolis. But Katie Brayt could not stop thinking about this. And she had

a huge piece in New York Times during about how concerned she was about Liam Ramos and how it

affected her and her family life and all that stuff. She had a chance to ask Christy Nome questions

today as part of the Judiciary Committee. And I listened to the whole thing because I assumed

someone who was deeply moved by the Liam Ramos story and couldn't stop thinking about it would ask

a question about it. She did not. Not a single question about Liam Ramos who was about how ice

had arrested people like Jared Fogel, the old subway guy and P Diddy and how they were not Nazis.

So that was how Katie Brayt spent her time apparently not thinking about Liam Ramos at least in

that 10 minutes I've been. So I'm going to leave it at that. JVL, Andrew, thanks for drawing

me really appreciated for those who watched. Thank you for watching, subscribe to the feed where you

get great recaps like this. Talk to you guys later. Talk to you guys later.