The Journal. - Kristi Noem’s $200 Million Mistake

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Kristi Noem brought a camera-ready leadership style to the Department of Homeland Security. Now, after a turbulent year leading the agency, Trump has fired her. WSJ's Michelle Hackman takes us behind the scenes of her controversial tenure and what led to her downfall. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening: - Inside the ICE Hiring Blitz - Inside ICE's Aggressive Approach to Arresting Migrants Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last year, a splashy ad campaign featuring Christy Noem, then head of the Department of Homeland Security, started showing up on TV. Why do I love these wide open spaces? They remind me of why our forefathers came here. Noam sits tall on a horse. She's wearing chaps, a cowboy hat. The granite faces of Mount Rushmore rise behind her. I'm Christy Noam. From the Cowboys Who Tamed the West... The ads were directed to people thinking of illegally immigrating to the U.S. It was a warning not to come. You cross the border illegally, we'll find you. Break our laws, we'll punish you.

These TV spots were mostly in English, and the campaign was pretty pricey, costing more than $200 million. Our colleague Michelle Hackman says this campaign came to define Nome's unconventional tenure at DHS. It's a long, glossy ad. It glorifies America. but it glorifies her too.

It almost felt like she wasn't just running the show at DHS. She was like literally, she was like starring in the show at DHS. Totally. That's exactly how I would describe it. And she spent $200 million on these ads. I mean, that's a huge sum. President Trump fired Nome last week. Her tenure was dogged by controversy.

But in the end? Of all the things she did, this ad came. campaign might have been the one that ultimately led to her downfall. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Monday, March 9th. Coming up on the show, Inside Christy Nome's Rocky Tenure at DHS. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. Want to go electric without sacrificing fun?

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taos. You deserve more confidence. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. When Christy Nome started running DHS, she took on a huge mandate to execute the president's signature domestic campaign promise. I mean, President Trump ran on the idea of doing a mass deportation, he was saying he wanted to deport, you know, 10 or 15 million people. And naturally, the person who was going to become the face of that was going to be his DHS secretary. Why did Trump pick Nome to lead DHS? You know, it's one of those things where Trump is looking for people who sort of are mirroring his TV-friendly style. He loves to see people on TV, defending him, going out promoting.

his agenda being a little confrontational. But I think, frankly, people were puzzled by the choice. There were a lot of rumors as Trump, you know, when the election and during the transition, that he would try to pick an immigration hawk, someone maybe from his first term. It came as a total surprise when he picked Christy Knoem. You know, she is a governor. Governors are often a place that presidents turn when when filling major cabinet positions. But she's from South Dakota. She had very limited experience with immigration. Once she took the job,

Michelle says Nome's camera-ready leadership style clashed with the culture at DHS. I start calling around to people to see what they think of her, and I very quickly realize that people inside the department who are not liberal. I mean, people who work in immigration enforcement, generally speaking, are fairly hawkins. are fairly sympathetic to the idea of deporting a lot of people.

They were complaining that Christyneome was sort of standing in their way and showboating in a way. One early anecdote that they shared with me that really became emblematic for me of how she runs the department is a few days after taking office, she went on an ice raid. And, you know, the whole point of an ice raid is that it's an element of surprise.

right? You need to catch someone at their house as they're leaving. And so if they know you're there, they're not going to come out. Well, Christy Noam goes on this ice raid in New York. She tweets a photo of herself wearing an ice cap before the raid even starts announcing that it's about to happen in New York. By tweeting out this picture of herself, by saying, we're about to do this big ice raid in New York, people were tipped off, advocacy groups were tipped off, and the raid wasn't successful. This was part of a pattern. Nome often put herself front and center at DHS. So back in March, I got invited to join her on her first international trip.

And it was a really important one because she was going to visit the really famous, the notorious prison in El Salvador, where the U.S. sent all of those asylum seekers without any kind of trial. I think it holds 15,000 people. And she was like walking through, very cavalier. And at one point toward the end of the tour, she pulls aside with her aides and they start shooting a video. I also want everybody to know, if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face. First of all, do not come to our country illegally. And behind her are these prisoners and they're like stacked up in bunk beds, four high, really cramped in there.

They're all shirtless and bald. and it's a really stark contrast because you have Nome there with perfectly quaffed curls and wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch. This facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.

According to Michelle's reporting, Noam wanted her immigration enforcement officers to be in the spotlight too. You know, we saw that there was guidance to ICE officers that, you know, they should film every interaction, every arrest, and that the more confrontational arrest was the better, that was explicit guidance given. Over and over, what we heard is that

Nome prioritized making a show out of enforcement over actually prioritizing effective enforcement. Noam and her top advisor fired or demoted 80% of the career ice field leadership that was in place when she started. And she was known to make employees take lie detector tests if she felt she couldn't trust them. And then there was the blanket incident. Basically, she went on a trip and her plane had a mechanical issue. So the team had to sort of switch planes at the last minute. And the crew forgot to move her blanket onto the new plane. Her top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, ended up firing the pilot, the head of the crew, for forgetting her blanket.

And the craziest part is, once they landed, they realized they had no one to fly them home. And so they had to reinstate the pilot. All over a blanket. Okay. The complaints weren't just about Nome, though. Michelle learned there were also concerns about Corey Lewandowski, her top advisor. Corey Lewandowski was, you know, Trump's very first campaign manager. He's been at Trump's side, you know, ever since maybe 2015.

Trump perceives him as very loyal. And we reported that Christy Noem and Corey Lewandowski, who are both married, are in a romantic relationship. And they've done, you know, very little inside DHS to hide that relationship from people. He is always by her side. He is her top advisor. Noam and Lewandowski have both denied reports of an affair. A DHS spokeswoman said the department, quote, doesn't waste time with salacious, baseless gossip.

What really concerned people inside DHS, sources told Michelle, was that Lewandowski was not technically a full-time government employee. So he is something called a special government employee. Listeners may be familiar with that because it's the same designation Elon Musk got. It's supposed to be for sort of specialized private sector expertise. It's supposed to be for a short stint inside the government. But Corey Lewandowski still had a role in the private sector for his own consulting firm

while also effectively serving as the chief of staff at DHS. Now, he was supposed to serve only 130 days, but he played all sorts of games to extend that out. He would basically follow other people into DHS buildings, so he didn't have to swipe himself in, so that way he wouldn't count a day. Anytime he traveled with the secretary, he didn't count that toward his 130 days. And so he kept extending this. The DHS spokeswoman said Lewandowski is in full compliance with the Office of Government Ethics Forms. One of the things that Nome and Lewandowski decided to do was order DHS to purchase eight airplanes for mass deportations, one of which was a lugubilant.

It's got only 18 seats and it's got a private cabin in back. Huh. Now, in DHS paperwork, this thing is earmarked for high-profile deportations. But we were told that this was the plane that Christy Noem and Corey Lewandowski were flying around in. The DHS spokeswoman said the plane was used for both deportations and cabinet-level travel. Nome and Lewandowski also had tight control over department spending. Basically, they set up this rule that said any contract over $100,000 had to receive personal sign-off from them. Now, that might sound like a good government strategy.

You know, $100,000 is a big chunk of change. But DHS is a multi-billion-dollar agency. Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of very big checks coming out of this department. There are a lot of very big checks. And $100,000 in government really doesn't. buy you very much. And so what's happening over the last few months is

that contracts were just piling up on Christy Noam's desk to the point where all sorts of things very nearly expired or did expire. And then came the ice operation in Minnesota. Well, it has been a noisy

night here in downtown Minneapolis as protesters have gathered outside a canopy by how would you say Christy Nellm handled Minnesota? She, you know, for months, she had been promoting, again, a sort of really showy, confrontational form of immigration enforcement. She engaged, you know, this guy named Greg Bovino in the Border Patrol

to lead these operations where he would send agents out in huge roving bands to look for people. I mean, very different from how traditional immigration enforcement is done, where you have sort of specific targets and it's kind of limited. And you saw that sort of extremely over-the-top confrontational approach culminate in two deadly shootings of American citizens

who were, you know, Renee Good was driving a car and Alex Prattie was out protesting. And you immediately have Christyneum go on TV and say, you know, Alex Prattie committed an act, active domestic terrorism. This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation

of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That's the facts. And then, you know, a video comes out of him and he's on his knees getting shot from behind his head. I mean, it was extremely incongruous with what Americans saw with their own eyes. According to Michelle's reporting, Patience was wearing thin inside the White House. And Democrats made DHS leadership. and issue in funding talks.

The president defended Nome publicly until last week when Nome was called to testify on Capitol Hill. So then that leads to this Senate hearing, how important was this Senate hearing for Christy Nome? It was huge for her, and we were told that most people in the White House by that point wanted her gone,

and they just felt like they needed to convince the president that it was the right time. And so there was a lot of attention paid to these hearings and how well she would perform. What we've seen is a disaster. Under your leadership, Ms. Gnome, a disaster. And that's what doomed her.

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The hearings were crazy. You know, it's one thing if Democrats are ambushing. Christy Noem, and she doesn't do well. It's another if Republicans go after her. And in this case, a couple of Republicans actually did. I mean, Tom Tillis, a Republican, went after her, basically saying her leadership had been awful, accusing her of obstructing sort of investigations into her work. That is stonewalling.

That's a failure of leadership. And that is why I've called for your resignation. In the House, you know, one Democrat asked her point blank on the dais, under Oh, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski? Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today. Noam refused to answer the question directly. And another Democrat gifted her a new blankie. I don't want you to leave. I got you a new Coast Guard Blankie, the one you lost.

Okay, so this is for you. You don't leave empty-handed when you come to junior. But Michelle's sources say the moment that really got Noem in trouble? Started when a staunch Trump ally grilled her about that ad campaign you heard about earlier. John Kennedy is a senator from Louisiana, and he really turned on Christy Noem in this hearing.

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. And he asked her why she spent so much money on these ads, what the point was, you know, she said, did they work? And he said they worked to promote your own self-image. Well, they were effective in your name recognition. And she made what I think was basically her fatal mistake in that interaction.

She told him, President Trump actually. signed off on these ads. We went through the legal processes. Did it correct? Did the president know you're going to do this? Yes. He did? Yes.

Okay. Why was that a fatal mistake? In Trump world, there's a lot you can get away with, but one sort of cardinal rule is that you never blame Trump or you never implicate Trump when you've made a mistake. We were told that when Trump saw that, you're not. she had implicated him, that is when he snapped and made the decision and said, she's done, we need to find a replacement for her. Trump later told Reuters that he, quote,

never knew anything about Noam's ad spends. Noem has said publicly before that Trump was aware of her campaign. Last Thursday, just a day after she testified, Noam was out at DHS. Her advisor, Corey Lewandowski, is also leaving. The president announced on truth social that it was moving. moving gnome to something he called the shield of the Americas. It's almost like she's an envoy to Latin America,

so she can continue some of the work that she was doing, fighting drug cartels, transnational gangs, the things that she liked to talk a lot about as DHS secretary. But, you know, it's not a cabinet position. It's also, you know, something that basically is redundant because we have ambassadors all over Latin America. And, you know, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, Latin America is sort of his personal sweet spot.

The person taking over Noam's role at DHS is a man named Mark Wayne Mullen. Mark Wayne Mullen is a senator from Oklahoma. This guy, Ryan, is a former MMA fighter, and fighting seems to be sort of the way that he approaches his current job, and I think that's how we should expect him to come into this new one. There's a lot of work we can do to get Department of Homeland Security working, working for the American people. I think that Mark Wayne Mullen, he is someone who doesn't shy away from confrontation.

You know, he's a former professional fighter. I think he is going to sort of take a tough macho man approach to immigration enforcement, but it may not be as showboaty as what we have witnessed over the last year. My focus is to keep the homeland secure. That's going to be my focus. We have been reporting on Christy Noem's foibles for so long. And over and over we were told, you know, Trump said that he picked the perfect cabinet and he doesn't want to contradict himself.

And so the fact that Christy Noam became the first person to get fired is pretty notable. While Noam's made-for-TV style of leadership appealed to Trump initially, Michelle says that in the end, she may have flown too close to the sun. There gets to a point where it becomes too much for him, and especially if someone is seen as sort of using a position that he gives them to serve themselves, to enrich themselves, that's when Trump really doesn't like it. And I think Christy Noem unfortunately crossed that line.

That's all for today. Monday, March 9th. The journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Josh Jossie and Turini Party. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.