Kristi Noem Fired — Her New Role Sounds Like a “Bad Marvel Movie” | Pivot

We used to be the cop or the protection when we hear a knock at the door. Now we are the knock at the door.

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

And where are you, Scott?

Uh, somewhere over the North Atlantic, Kara. Where are you?

All right. I am in my studio in DC, but we, we recorded-

Cory, maintain eye contact.

[laughing]

Maintain eye contact.

[laughing] Is Corey Lewandowski with you?

Yeah, Lewandowski. Yeah. So I'm fairly certain-

Yeah

... he's not gonna keep his job either.

I'm guessing. Well, let me just give people... Back it up for a minute. Scott, we recorded earlier, but had to hop back on, hence why you're on a plane, and, and I'm, and we're redoing this. President Trump has fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or given her a fake job. Trump announced the move on Truth Social, saying Noem had served us well and had, has had numerous and spectacular results. He announced the Republican senator, Markwayne Mullin, would replace Noem. Noem is stepping into a new role, apparently. She wasn't quite fired. I don't know what this is. It's like a firing, kind of.

Oh no, she was fired.

I get it. Her new [chuckles] -- Her-

She's like special envoy to Hulu-

No, she's-

... original programming or something.

No, she's [chuckles] special envoy, let's get it right, special envoy to the Shield of the Americas. I, I, I don't even... That's like a bad Marvel movie, I feel like. Like, the one that we don't wanna watch. But let's talk about this 'cause, uh, uh, later in the show, you have, uh, we, we'll be talking about a lot of things happening right now for the, for the Republicans. But, um, talk to me about this firing a little bit.

Well, supposedly... I mean, you might have more information than me on this, but supposedly it wasn't the conflict of interest of having an affair with her number two. It wasn't, uh, uh, essentially killing American citizens. It wasn't, it wasn't essentially overseeing what I would argue are the definition of concentration sy- camps, and that was black sites outside the legal jurisdiction or protection of your, of your, um, origin country, which is the definition of a concentration camp. It was... Supposedly what was the straw that broke Trump's back was that she had spent close to or over two hundred million dollars, I believe, on ads featuring her, which appeared to be, uh, courtesy of her, her number two, an attempt to raise her own awareness for a presidential run, that that, that that was what angered Trump. What have you heard, Kara?

She was advantaging herself, and Trump likes to only advantage himself, right? And so anybody else who's trying to do that... There was also the question, these two recent congressional hearings, to me I, w- I felt the writing was on the wall because Republicans in the Senate particularly were really going after her. So they knew that they had no repercussions to do so, right? If they had gone after her because they were good people or 'cause they had a, a backbone, I think only Tom Tillis has been doing that 'cause he's leaving. Um, uh, this is Senator Tillis from North Carolina. I think she, uh... I think they had permission to go after her, whether it was, uh, uh, Kennedy, uh, John Kennedy or, uh, or others that really did attack her. Um, and the Democrats did an excellent job too, bringing up all these issues you talked about. I just felt like it was open season on her, so to speak, someone who enjoys killing dogs. And, you know, even the reaction has been interesting. Uh, Senator Tom Tillis, uh, who was very upset about the disaster relief fuck-ups, I think very much so, and abo- also about fu- uh, getting rid of people, uh, g- I mean, going after people who didn't commit any crimes, right? Just in terms of, uh, he kept talking about a quota system, "Why are you doing it on a quota system?" in, in these hearings. He... H- his, uh, his thing on X saying goodbye was, "Senator Markwayne Mullin is a great guy and a great choice to lead DHS, restore competence, and refocus efforts on quickly distributing disaster aid," that's the first thing he noted, "keeping the border secure, and targeting violent illegal immigrants for deportation. Another big positive, he likes dogs," um, which of course is a reference to, to, uh, her, her killing, uh, her dog. Um, people are having a field day about this, of course, uh, on the thing, although one of the good ones about Markwayne Mullin, who is a senator from Oklahoma, was, uh, he can't even have a border between his name, uh, Mark and Wayne, Markwayne. Um, but no, they, they, you know, people... The Republicans felt emboldened to attack her, and therefore it was very clear that they got their signals from the White House, would be my guess.