Breaking News from Pod Save America - Noem Goes OFF THE RAILS Defending Trump in DISASTER Hearing

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: ZIP RECRUITER - http://ziprecruiter.com/CROOKED Top Trump Official Kristi Noem faces BRUTAL questioning from top Democrats during a chaotic Capitol Hill hearing. Jon Lovett and Dan Pfeiffer break down the biggest moments from this DISASTER hearing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So the knot of war continues in Iran, but here at home, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Nome was grilled by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Department defying court orders, characterizing Alex Prattie as a domestic terrorist, lavish spending on private jets. Let's start with that. We have Democratic Senator Sheldon White House of Rhode Island. Here he is talking to Nome about her air travel preferences. Jet with a bedroom in it. Yeah, we used a 737. I've been on it one. but it is being used by other administration officials and it is used for commanded control flights for the department. We will save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Does it have a bedroom? In fact, we spent $1.42 billion on ICE deportation flights last year. Does it have a bedroom in it? I believe it's being refurbished and not having a bedroom in it. So it is being refurbished. What kind of deportee justifies being flown out of the country in a luxury jet with a bedroom? jet with a bedroom and accommodations like this. There are aircraft being purchased that will be utilized for executive air travel and for deportations.

So some background on this. Nome purchased two Gulfstream G700 luxury jets in October for about $200 million. This is, I believe, the third plane, which is a Boeing 737 nickname the Big Beautiful jet, according to Axios, which is being leased and there are plans to buy it for about $70 million. the funding ostensibly comes from the one big beautiful bill. We're keeping in mind, as they say that we must fund the Department of Homeland Security. They have tens of billions of dollars and enough to buy private jets. Dan, do you think she dealt with the political problem here over her bedroom flying? I don't get the sense she answered the question anyway, shape, or either the

question that the question is asked or the question the Sheldon White House wanted to ask but did not ask. Yes, which is what exactly is being commanded and controlled. Yes, and with whom. And with whom. Yes. And with whom. Yeah. Now, there's been some criticism even from Republicans about this. Axios has a senior administration official saying this is the world's worst deal to buy an aircraft. This is an abuse. Apparently, according to this story, Russ Vote, who runs the runs OMB, raise concerns about the luxury jet spending to the White House, according to Axios. So the Department of Homeland Security used to have zero luxury jets.

It currently has two. This is the third she's planning to buy. And I believe this is the jet in the Wall Street Journal story where there was a blanket left behind and somebody was fired. I believe that that's referring to this airplane. She doesn't really address the question.

She's now claiming she's only flown in it once, that it's being refurbished. But I don't think it could be refurbished until they buy it. Yeah, certainly not. And like there are multiple questions here. Like one, just the financial wisdom of buying lots of planes and to what end, whether this is, these are the planes you should be using for mass deportation. And then there is the question about the spending of Department of Homeland Security money, taxpayer money on her lavish lifestyle. She's also living in a Coast Guard housing on military base right now. There's all kinds of questions about why she wants. wanted this fancy jet as opposed to the typical military jet upon which she would be flying as normally. And she doesn't address those questions either. She tries to abide them by saying it's going to be used for deportations, but also be used for her own use, I believe. And the decision

to whether it's being refurbishing at the bedroom out or not is sort of unclear in her answer here. But if it is happening, it's because the Wall Street Journal reported this was happening. And there was an outcry, both inside and outside of the administration, about her having this luxury jetliner with a bed and a luxury bedroom to fly. around the country on. With, according to the Wall Street Journal, Corey Lewandowski, who she is reportedly having an affair with, even though they deny it. Though, apparently he's also been seen going in and out of the Coast Guard housing.

And so the question about why the Department of Homeland Security is flying with an employee of the department who's a kind of a special detailed employee whose time should have already ran out on a plane with a bedroom. There's some financial questions. There's some other questions. A lot of questions. A lot of questions. And it's not just the spending on the Jets. Senator John Kennedy, who's a Republican from Louisiana, he pressed Nome on a massive ad campaign that Nome has been running using Department of Homeland Security money. We've saved the taxpayers over $13.2 billion just by evaluating contracts, negotiating lower ones and canceling ones that aren't necessary to do our duties.

How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently? Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing. the invasion come from with putting commercials out that told them that if they were in this country illegally, that they needed to leave or we would detain them and remove them and they'd not get the chance to come back to America the right way. That has been extremely effective. Ask you to run these advertisements. Is that right?

We had that conversation, yes, before I was put in this position and sworn in and confirmed and since then as well. He goes on to press again. wait, sorry, the president asked you to run advertisements with you in it when you became Secretary of Homeland Security. He says, well, no, we talked about the importance of getting the word out about the need for people to self-deport. I just want to say that John Kennedy's book, this John Kennedy, his book is called How to

Test Negative for Stupid. Been on the best seller list for like months now. He is, he, look, he knew exactly what he was doing. He really sets her up because he starts by saying, like, you review these contracts to make sure there's not too much spending. And she kind of touts her figure however real it may. And how do you square that with the $220 million in advertising? And he does something really funny in that, in that exchange, too, because he presses her. He says, you're telling me, you went to Donald Trump. Donald Trump, the person we all know, and said, I want to run ads. I'm in them. They're me in

them. Christy Noam. And he was, Donald Trump, me. And she said, well, we talked about it. And he says, you did? And then she has to admit that she didn't because obviously it would get back to him. What did you, what did you think about this? I mean, just truly great theater. Like most, oftentimes these hearings are terrible and ridiculous. This is one that actually feels like Hollywood scripted, in part because, because John Kennedy, this, John Kennedy is a caricature of a senator from House of Cards, basically.

But there are a couple other parts of this one is like, as you mentioned, she's in the ads, right? And the Wall Street Journal reports, this is part of an idea that the aforementioned Corey Lewandowski has to raise her name ID so she can run for president in 2028. The ads were produced. She claims they have another exchange that goes on here about the process by which she picked the firm. She said it was all career employees who just happened to stumble on the firm that was a brand new firm formed 11 days before the contract was signed that included that one of the subcontractors was the people who made her political ads when she was running for governor. of South Dakota. And there's also, quite the coincidence. Quite a coincidence.

Also there's a connection to the husband of, her spokesperson, her spokesperson, Trisha McLaughlin's husband is connected. And she was in a exchange about this on social media today where she said, how dare you? Not a contractor or a subcontractor. It's ridiculous. And so that's quite the coincidence, which is very defiant in this clip as it goes on where she claims, no, it was run through the, I didn't have anything to do with it. It was run the normal.

There was a bidding process. And so it's not clear. The thing about Christy Nome is she's not deaf enough to dissemble without lying. So, you know, we've had sort of shifty, dishonest cabinet secretaries before. And they'll try to say something to that is technically defensively true without admitting to the underlying. The JD Vance. Yeah, the J.D. Vance style, right. J.D. Vance is very good.

Rubio is good at this, too. sophisticated operators like that are good at this. She out and out claims that this was run through the normal bidding process. And I just find that hard to believe. It's impossible. It's impossible. So based on the information we have that is public, it sure sounds like she lied to Congress in just the exchange she had with John Kennedy. Pod Save America Breaking News is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

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Now, the hearing obviously touched on a lot of issues. Durbin pressed known pretty hard on the number of court orders that ICE is violating. I think 96 is the number according to one. report and she didn't really answer the question there either. She just said, we follow court orders that apply to us. He pressed on that. Durbin also pressed Noam on why she described Alex Prattie as a domestic terrorist. And she just, you know, once again says, oh, this was information I was given and we try to have accurate information. And right as he was pressing her on the question, she was and said, well, if you get the information wrong, will you apply?

apologize. Will you acknowledge that you had made a mistake? And she said, yes, I will acknowledge I made a mistake when I get something wrong. And right when he was about to press her directly on this question, a protester jumps up and interrupts. And then they move on to a different topic, which is actually very frustrating. But it then went to Amy Klobuchar. And so, yes, like, Pristine Ome is a ridiculous character. And this is a, you know, it would be funny if the stakes weren't so high and there hasn't been also like the deaths of American citizens. And I thought the way Klobuchar put this to Kristyne Homme is worth watching. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preti, 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 Prattie's parents? We were relying in the hours after that incident that was so horrific on information we were getting from the ground from our agents. I just asked if you had anything you wanted to say to the parents or to the family of Renee Good after you called them domestic terrorists. I can't even imagine what they have gone through in the loss of their son and the loss of their family members. But how specifically calling them domestic terrorists without any evidence of that?

sir i did a ma'am i did not call him a domestic terrorist i said it appeared to be an incident of i think the parents saw it for what it was a disgusting person just it is unbelievable so i actually didn't call him a domestic terrorist i just said he was somebody who committed domestic terrorism yes uh what a what a defense there she seems to want to try to acknowledge the pain that the family is going through but will not apologize will not acknowledge she was wrong, will not say that it was wrong to go up there in the moments after this event to call some of domestic terrorists without evidence. And okay, she's not politically savvy.

She obviously doesn't have the kind of human capacity to acknowledge her error. But man, like, it seems obvious that even if you're not a good person, the right thing to do here would be to just say you were wrong and to say you were sorry. What stops her even now from doing that? It is, I mean, I think, one, just a complete lack of human decency. Like, that's been evident in her response, Stephen Miller's response, frankly, Trump's response to the killings of Alex Preddy, Renee Good. And so many other things have happened in this administration. Just that just no capacity to feel empathy for other people's pain if they are not people on your team.

I mean, as we know, Trump didn't even feel any empathy for Renee Good's family at all until we just found out that her father was a Trump supporter. and he felt differently, sort of. Sort of. And the other piece here is just this belief that you can never, ever admit you're wrong. Like this is this Trumpian lesson that everyone has taken. And there are things that Trump can get away with that other people cannot. And it's just like, you're right. Like a normal human confronted with a mistake of that gravity,

with that sort of impact on someone suffering the worst moments of their lives, would be to immediately apologize, to feel terrible about it, to do what you can to rectify it. But even if you don't possess that, like, core part of being a human, just any ounce of political instinct or PR savvy would tell you that the thing you do in this moment is apologize. And she cannot, she can do neither. She can't have the human response and she can't have the smart response. It's just like a soulless moron. And it really, like, to me, this has been, I didn't, like, there is a connection between the ways in which these people do not believe in democracy.

and their willingness to try to overturn elections and how they behave in these moments because there's something about like practicing democracy that is about acknowledging other people's humanity, showing some forbearance, showing a willingness to admit you're wrong, like that that is a kind of democratic practice, right? To like reach out to the family and apologize

for having done this, try to like rectify it or at least like sort of provide some amount of like acknowledgement of their pain and their grief because that's what you. you do in a civil society and when the government has done something terrible to you. And like she doesn't have that instinct for the same reason they are like it's a, because it's an instinct to dominate, right? Like that's what it is.

It's like I don't have to admit I'm wrong. That's for other people. If I admit I'm wrong, it's weak. And being weak is not something that I can do when I work for Donald Trump. So before we go, Senator Tom Tillis, Republican in North Carolina. He is retiring. He has been on a tear about Chris. genome and he basically went up there and said, hey, I'm not really going to ask you any question

because this is not, I don't have any questions for you. This is a performance review. And then basically yelled for his seven minutes. Here's one part that I think is worth seeing. Secretary, I read your book last week. The passage where you talk about killing a dog that was 14 months old. I trained dogs. A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in 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. Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis. We're an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we're

exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you've demonstrated anything but that in the time that I've seen you responding to the emergency in North Carolina and across the southeast and acknowledging when mistakes are made. He real at the end of this rant, he calls on her to resign, at which point the committee seems to applaud, which I've never really seen before. And he's like, stop applauding, man. I don't want your fucking applause. Fuck you, Christina.

Storms out of the room. Man, it was, it was, look, like, I don't know what the value of it particularly. I find it hard to believe he happened to pick up her book last week. But man, he fucking hates her. And he wanted to read, talk to her about that book. He tries to like loosely connect it to like, he's like, you killed a dog. It was impulsive, the way that it has to do with what we're talking about in some sense.

I think it does have something to do with that. Because the point, the killing the dog is cruel. The putting in the book is stupid. And cruelty and stupidity are what define very much. much like all of Trump administration, but particularly the DHS. It is poorly executed cruelty. And like, it really fits like the idea. She was not just some random governor of South Dakota who might one day stumble into a competition. She was on the short list to be vice president. And she published a book touting dog murder. Like it's like it's so stupid. Yeah. Well, it really like there does seem to be just like a,

she does seem to be missing like a like genuinely has like kind of a missing piece. that she didn't under, like really, like a person who just doesn't understand how people will respond to things normally. Like, no, I'm sorry, killing a young dog because it was creating an inconvenience for you. Like, that's not leadership. That's not something to brag about. It's not a hard choice. You didn't need to do that. Nobody could read that and think you needed to kill that dog.

So yeah, it's, it is stupid, like for sure. But, like, there's, I actually do think there's something wrong with her. Like, it really is like kind of a sick thing. So that's the hearing with Christy Noem. Look, if you subscribe to this YouTube channel, if you support what we're doing at Cricket Media, that money's not going to private jets with a bedroom. All right, Dan, that's going to content.

No private jet for that. I thought that was for the next tour. Next door. That's, yeah, that's for the European swing. Private jet for their bedroom. You know, I don't know, flip coins for who gets the bedroom, I guess. But it goes to help us build an independent progressive pro-democracy media company to get good information in front of more people.

support what we're doing here. And Dan, we'll see you next time. All right, bye everyone.