Will Trump hang on to Kristi Noem?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Coming up, she's the beauty pageant winner who became the glamorous face of Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. So, who is Kristi Noem?

0:22Hi everyone, Neil Patterson here with another one of our weekend profiles. Now, as you probably know, every Friday, we're taking a closer look at someone who's been making the news. And Christine Ome has certainly been doing that. You might even say bigly as Donald Trump's head of Homeland Security. 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. She has, frankly, entirely of her own design, positioned herself front and centre of the president's crackdown on illegal immigrants.

0:56A crackdown which, as we now know, has led to immigration agents shooting dead to American citizens. Her actions with what's going on in Minneapolis, I think, probably have been more inflammatory than explanatory. Not that she's the type to let a little criticism get in her way. Once upon a time, in fact, she could have been heading to the White House. I would say that she was probably the front runner to be Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee. Still, like plenty of politicians before her, she has a bit of a checkered past. There's an unfortunate incident with a dog. A South Dakota farm girl who became part of Donald Trump's top team.

1:39Clearly not short of ambition. But have those dark days in Minneapolis put the brakes on a pretty meteoric rise. John Schaaf is professor of political science at Northern State University in South Dakota. John, look, the reason we are profiling Kristi Noem today is pretty straightforward. Those events in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As head of Homeland Security, she is the overall boss of the ICE agents who are involved. So, look, perhaps let's just start there. I mean, what is Homeland Security? Who are ICE? So, Homeland Security is this department. It's relatively new, actually, because it arose out of the events of 9-11.

2:19So after 9-11, there was this reorganization of, you might say, the internal security apparatus of the United States government. Various divisions that had been spread over multiple departments came under one head in this new department called the Department of Homeland Security that became fully online in 2003. So then part of that is the immigration side. And there are three divisions that oversee immigration. There used to be one, this before 9-11, there was one called Immigration and Naturalization Services, the INS. That got split into three different organizations. There's one organization that oversees basically the bureaucracy and the paperwork.

3:08Then there's another division that is Border Patrol. They secure the borders. Then you've got this third thing, the immigration and custom enforcement. And their job is sort of internally dealing with immigration. So not the borders and not the mundane paperwork, but which mostly has to do with enforcement of immigration law when somebody is here illegally or they've overstayed a visa. once they've gotten over the border and they're past border patrol and they've been here, identifying those people, detaining them, and then ultimately the idea would be deportation. So that's essentially what ICE does.

3:52John, can we then just try and work out how a farm girl from South Dakota rose all the way to be essentially in charge of Donald Trump's immigration crackdown? So Kristi Noem is from a small town in South Dakota called Castlewood. And so she comes from a farming community. She grew up on a farm. She left the farm to go to college. But then what happened is, a story she likes to tell, her father died in a farm accident. And at that point, she dropped out of college and went back to the farm to help run the family farm. and the way that was operating essentially, it was still operating as a farm, but they'd also turn it sort of into a hunting operation.

4:34South Dakota is a big hunting culture. And so people would pay money to hunt that property. And so that's what she was doing and then got involved in politics sort of early in the 2000s. She became politically active and got involved in South Dakota politics to start with. Just before the politics though, there is an awful lot in this upbringing that I can see as, you know, little bit little house on the prairie, very frontiersy. She likes guns. She likes horses, doesn't she? Well, you know, part of that is South Dakota culture. You know, I believe other than the state of Montana, the per capita gun ownership in South Dakota is higher than any state in the United States.

5:17It's a hunting culture. It's a rural culture. And so riding the horse, being familiar with guns, that's what people do. On the one hand, I keep hearing her described as a high achiever academically. She was active in all manner of institutions when she was in high school. And at the same time, didn't she also win a pretty big beauty pageant at one point? Yeah, this is true. I've met Kristi Noem on a handful of occasions. Whatever else you can say about Kristi Noem, she's not dumb. She's very smart. She's very articulate. And yes, there is this other side of her that is, if you will, interested in glamour, interested in appearances.

5:57I think this is an aspect of her character. She would have to be, wouldn't she, to be elected or to win the South Dakota Snow Queen title. She pays attention to her appearance. I think you can say that for sure and probably has for some time been very conscious of how she appears. So how exactly did Kristi Noam go from running a farm to running for office? Her father died. This would have been, I guess, early 1990s. And about 10 years later or so is when she gets involved in politics. She was in her very early 30s and she decides to run for the South Dakota legislature and wins. She was a state legislator in our state, ascended to some leadership.

6:43and it's from there that she went into national politics, running for the United States House of Representatives. The position that she found herself in, moving from local to national politics in and of itself in the United States, is something of an achievement. Talk to me about that transition from the local to the national stage. So she first ran for national office in 2010. So this is Obama administration. Obama's elected in 2008. and then two years later in 2010, we have congressional elections. It was pretty clear that it was going to be a good Republican year. Our representative in our state was a Democrat representing a fairly Republican state.

7:22And so we all knew that she was vulnerable. And so there were three Republicans who were interested in running against her. So they had a primary contest amongst the Republicans. Noam came out ahead in a pretty hotly contested race. And then once she got that nomination, she was running against the sitting congresswoman, Stephanie Hertzeth Sandlin. And it was a tough race. It's hard to beat an incumbent, even if in a Republican state in a Republican year. But she did win. One of the things that Kristi Noem has always done well when running for public office, she's very good at raising money. She was very well funded and was ultimately successful.

8:03And of course, in American politics, cash does get you an awful long way. but politically, ideologically, where was she at that time? I think it's fair to say that Kristi Noem was kind of your standard issue conservative Republican. And that was a time, you know, if people know anything about U.S. politics, we had at that time something called the Tea Party movement, referencing the Boston Tea Party when we had a bit of a disagreement with people on your side of the Atlantic Ocean. And so this was sort of we're very angry about what's going on, the Obama administration. A lot of that was fallout from the economic collapse of kind of 07, 08.

8:44And I think she sort of identified with that a little bit more ideological, a little bit more aggressive. But once she got into office, I would say what she was was a fairly good Republican soldier. She associated herself with Republican leadership. and I would just call her most of her congressional career, I would just say a standard issue conservative Republican. So clearly an effective politician. Would it be fair to describe her as glamorous throughout this kind of part of her political career? I do think she was interested in ascending to positions of power, very conscious of how she appears.

9:24But I'll tell you just like a little anecdote. I talked about that primary race and I asked a local legislator who had served with her in the South Dakota legislature, what do you think of these three people? And this person said, well, I'll tell you this. Of these three people, the one most likely to, if you will, go Washington, Kristi Noem is the most likely to sort of become a creature of national politics and maybe be seduced by the quasi-celebrity that comes with it. And actually, I would say that turned out in that instance, not to be correct. I don't think she really got captured by it.

10:05And I think there's a reason why eventually she, after eight years, came back to South Dakota to run for governor. She kind of became tired of Washington, D.C. She got tired of the travel back and forth, being separated from her family, and she wanted to come home. I think the more celebrity aspect of it comes later. It certainly is true enough in her time in Congress, she would appear on the TV shows, she would appear on Fox News, certainly media conscious, aware of her appearances. But I think that became heightened later. Oddly, and maybe ironically, after she came back to the state and became governor, that her national profile increased after she left Washington, D.C.

10:53in national politics. And it was during her time as governor of South Dakota and the first woman to hold that post. It was at that point that she started to come into or become aware or become part of the MAGAverse. How did that happen? When Trump first came into office, like most Republicans, I guess she fell in line, but I wouldn't have called her particularly MAGA. Two things happened. One thing that happened was COVID. And so during COVID, Christine Ohm, who I think sort of administratively handled that quite well as a governor of our state, she certainly gave me, I think most people confidence that she knew what she was doing.

11:38But one of the things that happened to that is South Dakota was one of a handful of states that emerged relatively quickly from lockdown. Sort of the state government took a lighter touch when it comes to regulations. And she achieved a national profile of someone who was sort of, you know, bucking the system, so to speak. And then also then in 2021, I believe it was, Donald Trump came to the state and did a big rally at Mount Rushmore. Of course, the famous monument of Mount Rushmore is in our state. And they did a big event there at Mount Rushmore with fireworks and everything. And that really put her into the Trump orbit.

12:22And clearly he liked her. And I think at that point, a switch flipped and she became interested in national politics and started being on national television more and more as governor, started traveling around the country, campaigning for other Republicans, for conservative political causes. And I think at that point, she caught the bug. Wasn't the relationship between the two of them such that actually at one point she was being talked about for the vice presidential nominee? What happened there? There's an unfortunate incident with a dog. I would say that she was probably the front runner to be Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee.

13:08Wow. Right. His selection to be his running mate. And then Kristi Noem, with national aspirations in mind, released this book. This was her second political autobiography. You know someone is interested in national politics in the United States. In fact, there's a term for it. It's called the campaign book. It's a way to get you on the news, get you on programs, get some attention. Well, she did that once, and then she did it again. But in this book, she tells this very odd story that she had this hunting dog named Cricket. But Cricket was a bad dog who didn't listen to her, who got into the neighbor's chickens and was misbehaving.

13:51And her solution to that was to take Cricket to the quarry and shoot him. What? Yes. So is that common in the United States? No. I'll tell you this. Right. I've lived in South Dakota for 25 years. I have many friends who are farmers and ranchers. Their relationship with animals is not the way most people relate to animals. In a sense, these are commodities. I'm not saying they're cruel. They do not have the romantic view of animals that most people have, especially dogs. And I've got a friend who's a rancher who said, you know, when our dogs get sick, when they get injured, we don't take them to the vet to get the shot, to go to sleep.

14:36You shoot the dog and you're not romantic about it. Now that's a dog at the end of its life. That's what's unusual about this is it was a young dog who was misbehaving. And from Christy Noem's point of view, her point with this is look at me making decisive choices and not having rose colored glasses and being emotional. I make tough choices. And I know for a fact, people I know in state government told me. She has told this story before. She was told by some of her political operatives, stop telling that story because even in South Dakota, it comes off as odd. Everywhere else it comes off as absolutely daffy.

15:19Stop telling that story. But she put it in her book. But it clearly didn't stymie her political career entirely because, of course, Donald Trump did bring her in as head of the Department for Homeland Security. Why her? What was it he saw in her that he wanted her in this quite high-profile role? This is the oddity, Neil, is that when that book came out, her political fortunes absolutely tanked. Then she did a couple media appearances trying to salvage her image. They failed. First of all, there was the dog episode. there's another episode in that book about how she had met with Kim Jong-un, which never happened.

16:05It didn't happen. And then she had to admit, whoops, I actually didn't read my own book. Right. So this is a disaster. And I had talked to people in the state of South Dakota, people in a position to know is that we don't know what she's going to do. And there was a A big powwow at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's Florida home. She wasn't invited. Oh, she's on the outs. I was surprised. I think a lot of people were surprised. Not that she got a job in the Trump administration, but it was a relatively high profile job outside of what you might think of as her area of expertise. And I guess it goes to show you that despite some reports, maybe Kristi Noem was higher in Donald Trump's estimation than we thought.

16:53Have you been in any way, though, surprised by how she has conducted herself in the position? Yep. I will say this. Let's go back to when she was governor. clearly with national aspirations in mind for a governor of the state of South Dakota, which borders no other country. We do not border Canada. We do not border Mexico. There's no ocean. She took an unusual interest in immigration policy and in fact sent a division of the South Dakota National Guard down to Texas to help with border enforcement. So she had talked more about immigration as governor of South Dakota than would seem natural. So that's probably one reason why she got tapped for this.

17:38I would also say that in her time as governor of South Dakota, when she was starting to get national aspirations, she was extraordinarily image conscious. Appearances were a big deal to her. For example, they built a TV studio at the governor's residence in our state capitol. And so she could do national TV appearances right there from her house. That's someone who's thinking about media. And I think some of that you see in her time as Secretary of Homeland Security, that I'm going to put on the Kevlar vest and carry a gun and go along with ICE agents. I'm going to create media opportunities. I'm going to go up to the Canadian border and make fun of the Canadians, right?

18:26Which I guess makes a funny Twitter post, but maybe it's not what you want your Department of Homeland Security secretary to be doing. Let's talk very specifically then about what's been taking place in Minneapolis. How has she responded to events there? Well, it's worth noting that she, in some sense, has now been replaced as being the spokesman for that. The White House immigration chief, Tom Holman, has gone to Minneapolis and it sort of has taken over. Like, I'm in charge here now. Because I think what has gotten Noam in trouble there is, you know, obviously we've had these two shootings, right?

19:03With someone being killed by, in one case, ICE agents. Then the most recent one was by a Border Patrol agent. Two different divisions, but both under Department of Homeland Security. And the reaction of Noam to these shootings has been, you might say, speak first, think later. to try to get ahead in both cases. She called these people domestic terrorists, which is probably more than the evidence suggests. But domestic terrorists is rhetoric, I think, designed more to inflame than to inform. So not exactly helpful. And her actions with what's going on in Minneapolis, I think probably have been more inflammatory than explanatory or helpful.

19:51Instead of trying to tone down the tension, it's had a tendency to ramp up the tension. Is this then perhaps the beginning of the end of her political career? It's certainly, I think, the case, at least for now, she is on the outs with the Trump White House. And how that plays out would be the question of, do they get rid of her? And in what manner has she gotten rid of? Or does something else have to happen for her to sort of move on to a different job, whatever that would be, because I'm not sure what that would be. Look, John, there has been a name in the back of my mind all the way through this interview and a name that might be familiar to some people who are listening to us.

20:31And that's Sarah Palin, someone with an outdoorsy background, a slightly unconventional kind of approach to things, gun carrying, cheerleader for the Republican right. You know, Sarah Palin is, I think, something of a good analogy, She telegenic and very good with the camera, very at ease in public and talking on television. And what happened to Sarah Palin was a star that you might say burned brightly and then faded, right? And then died and not really ready for prime time. In a lot of ways, she got in her own way with that and maybe ascended to national politics faster than she should have and wasn't really ready to do it.

21:12And Christy Noem might be in a similar situation. And oddly, precisely because she's so focused on her image, it's sort of obvious that she is crafting an image and that she's a little bit too desperate to appeal to certain kinds of people. and it's a little bit too obvious. And in that sense, I think she has rubbed people the wrong way. And instead of building up a record of accomplishment that she could run on, look at all these good things I've done. She's focused more on, well, what kind of person do I appear to be? When you live by the PR and you die by the PR. And that's why things like, no, the dog story in the book hurt her so much.

21:59If what you've got to offer is, I'm this really energetic, telegenic person who appeals to certain kinds of people because of the way I act, when your image gets sullied, you don't have anything to go back on. Well, where she goes, we will find out eventually. John, been a pleasure chatting to you. Thanks for your time. You bet. Thank you, Neil. My thanks to John and, of course, to you for listening. The Daily is back the other side of the weekend. Till then, do take care. Thank you.