Trump fires Kristi Noem, appoints new fascist

On 5 March, Trump ignominiously sacked Kristi Noem from her state-level role as Homeland Security secretary. Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin will take up her place at the end of the month, pending confirmation from the US Senate.

Readers will, by now, no doubt be familiar with Noem as the public face of America’s far-right anti-immigration policies. In particular, Noem called both Renee Good and Alex Pretti ‘domestic terrorists’ after their murder by ICE agents last year.

Although, let’s be clear here. Trump didn’t fire Noem because she’s a lying fascist at the head of a pack of murderers. That would be hypocritical. Rather, Trump knows that public opinion has turned against his immigration policies, and he needed a sacrificial lamb.

Fascism and fuckups

In place of her previous role, Trump is now shunting Noem off to a job as a ‘special envoy’ for the US. She’ll be joining a Western hemisphere security initiative called ‘the Shield of the Americas’.

Among the former Homeland Security chief’s laundry list of highly public fuckups, Noem accidentally let slip the identity of ICE murderer Jonathan David Ross. She also claimed that Ross had internal bleeding, which was later exposed as a lie.

Other examples of Noem’s outright fabrications include the utterly false claim that an immigrant deportee was a cannibal. She also published a photo of a Black protester that was manipulated to look like she was crying.

Noem’s tenure at Homeland Security saw her join ICE raids wearing a bulletproof vest, promote policies to close the Mexican border, and spend $220m of federal funds on adverts. Most of those adverts, she appeared in personally.

All horrifying, and all par for the course for the Trump regime. As such, she’s acted as something of a Nazi-slogan-spouting figurehead for the Republicans’ vicious ‘security’ policies.

Sacrificial wolf

On 3 March, Noem attempted to defend her spending at a Capitol Hill hearing. There, she stated that Trump was aware of the cost of the ad campaign. Two days later, Trump claimed that he “never knew anything about it”, shortly before firing her.

However, this was far from the first indicator that Noem had fallen from the US dictator’s favour. During the sweeping protests against ICE in Minneapolis, Trump sent in ‘border tsar’ and former ICE director Tom Homan, rather than Noem herself.

The fact that Trump has sacked Noem is no indicator of his authoritarianism softening. Rather, the US dictator has seen that his public approval is plummeting, particularly on the subject of immigration.

Turns out that using a masked secret police to murder and kidnap people to concentration camps makes you unpopular, even in America.

As such, Noem has made a convenient sacrifice to make Trump look like he’s relenting. Meanwhile, nothing will change under Markwayne Mullin, save maybe that ICE will get a little more cautious, a little more covert in their actions.

The problem was never that they’re fascists — the problem was they got caught too many times.

Featured image via the Canary