Trump Was Always Going to Fire a Woman First

Kristi Noem's sacking isn't about ICE's barbarism in Minneapolis. She committed the one sin Trump won't forgive: Looking bad on television.

Susan J. Demas is Lincoln Square’s Executive Editor and a 25-year journalism veteran. Subscribe to her Substack.

Illustration by Riley Levine

I haven’t checked the parasitic array of betting sites, which seems to be the best way to predict whatever ghastly thing the Trump regime will do next.

But after Trump rolled out his motley assortment of cabinet officials last year, I could have told you that his first scalp would be a woman. So let’s just say I wasn’t shocked that gleeful dog killer turned Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem got the ax Thursday.

Trump’s 2024 campaign was a masterclass in toxic masculinity, from selling his Jan. 6 coup as a cool, anti-establishment rebellion to gullible podcast bros to placating billionaire techbros with his No. 2 pick, JD Vance, who’s oddly obsessed with convincing women to procreate even though he seems to loathe spending time with his own offspring.

Axios cloyingly called it the “boys vs. girls election” before Joe Biden even dropped out (“It’s Donald Trump’s chest-beating macho appeals vs. Joe Biden’s softer, reproductive-rights-dominated, all-gender inclusivity.”) And once Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, Trump took his Hillary Clinton playbook to the next level, from posting oral sex jokes to reportedly calling her a “bitch.”

After he won, Trump assembled “the least diverse US government this century,” according to the Guardian U.K. Unsurprisingly, women composed only 16 percent of his confirmed nominees in his first 300 days — lagging even the 23 percent in his first administration.

It was clear to me that the few women who had made it into Trump’s inner circle would get outsized scrutiny. And Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi — who both crave the spotlight as much as their reality TV buffoon boss — soon began jockeying for who would get axed first.

For a while, it looked like Bondi had the inside track to the unemployment line. A year ago, she launched a Trumpian stunt at the White House, doling out binders full of “the Epstein files” to more than a dozen far-right influencers. But they soon discovered there was really nothing new there.

And as the year dragged on, the MAGA natives started becoming restless. After all, Trump had promised full transparency — and retribution — over the Democratic pedophile ring they had been railing against for a decade. And suddenly the guy who promised to drain the swamp was dragging his feet over the biggest conspiracy in history. (It had never seemed to occur to them that the president, who enjoyed a well-documented, decades-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, could be implicated).

Bondi, who’s always shown a certain moral flexibility when it comes to Trump, did her best to block and tackle for him, like dispatching Deputy AG Todd Blanche to make nice with imprisoned Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

Despite intense pressure from the administration, Congress passed a law in November ordering the full release of unclassified files. Bondi’s DOJ promptly broke that law — flouting deadlines, withholding millions of documents, releasing victims’ names while redacting those of alleged perpetrators, and withholding and removing files related to Trump.

But what I think has saved Bondi — thus far — was her utter contempt for Epstein survivors at the House Judiciary Hearing last month. Trump’s AG repeatedly refused to apologize — or even turn around and acknowledge their very existence and humanity. And I think that disgusting display got the endorphins going in her doddering boss just enough to salvage her job.

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It should be noted that in his first term, Trump routinely released Twitter screeds announcing cabinet firings like it was another episode of The Apprentice (which the beltway media slurped up). But this time around, he’s falling asleep in meetings, sporting weird rashes, and constantly losing his train of thought in speeches. It’s almost like he didn’t have the stamina or attention span to fire people anymore.

But his poll numbers are bleak — the one thing he truly cares about. People hate his tariffs, his vicious deportation agenda has turned the majority against ICE, and there’s no rally-round-the-flag effect from his Iran War, which is splintering the MAGA base even further.

Someone’s head had to roll.

Ultimately, Kristi Noem’s weak performance in congressional hearings this week doomed her with Donnie. Trump can excuse a lot of things — lying under oath, bilking taxpayers for luxury travel, leading agencies that murdered two American citizens in cold blood — but he can’t stomach someone who wilts under the media spotlight and makes him look bad.

By the time Noem showed up on Capitol Hill, she’d been plagued by a steady drip of scandals for months. In a normal administration, her role overseeing the wanton brutality of border patrol and ICE agents would have cost Noem her job long before Renee Good and Alex Pretti bled out on Minneapolis’ streets.

But ICE Barbie was doing exactly what Trump (and his death hobbit consigliere, Stephen Miller) wanted her to do: take over blue cities with deadly force; round up non-white people, regardless of citizenship; and terrorize, beat and even kill anyone standing in their way.

Trump, of course, had no moral objection to ICE’s violence in the Twin Cities. He simply didn’t like how it was playing on teevee and in polling. And so Noem’s unconvincing shrieking that a V.A. nurse and a mother of three were domestic terrorists made her a target.

Hit pieces on her just kept coming — and not just on her evolving Mar-a-Lago face — no doubt fed to hungry D.C. reporters by her chief administration rival, border czar Tom Homan. A particularly damning Wall Street Journal story last month detailed her very special relationship with aide Corey Lewandowski and termination of a Coast Guard pilot for leaving her blankie behind on a plane.

You might think that Noem’s penchant for tricked-out private jets and alleged canoodling with an underling wouldn’t exactly give Trump the vapors. But unfortunately for Noem, she happens to be female. And as we all know, in Trumpland, there are very different rules for girls, especially when it comes to affairs.

At the hearings, Noem took fire for a $143 million contract to political allies for a DHS ad campaign featuring her riding on horseback through ​Mount Rushmore. That kind of graft is frankly small ball for anyone in this administration — Trump, himself, is suing U.S. taxpayers for a cool $10 billion — but Noem made the cardinal error of claiming he signed off on the deal, something the president promptly denied.

But according to the Trump-allied New York Post, it was Noem’s cavalier performance while being grilled over Lewandowski that was the “final straw” for the president. (“It was f—ing brutal,” a source said).

The next day, Trump fired off a Truth Social post firing her and announcing lunkheaded U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin as her replacement (touting his status as an ex-MMA fighter as an essential credential for the job). In a half-hearted, face-saving gesture, Trump appointed Noem the new Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, which seems about as real as her filler-fed face.

MAGA media like the Post’s Rich Lowry wasted no time piling on, savaging Noem as a “self-serving glory hound,” even though that’s an essential prerequisite for any job in the Trump administration.

Trump may have put her down “like a dog” — to use one of his favorite phrases — but at least Noem’s fared better than her poor pup, Cricket. Then again, if ICE Barbie has to fly commercial again, she’ll probably consider this a fate worse than death.

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