Noem testified before Congress this week that Trump approved her $200 million ad campaign that featured her and Trump was supposedly very angry and it led to her firing. They’ve been playing for over a year in every media market. But I recalled that this story has been around since the early days of the administration and Noem has always told the same story — and Trump never denied it. The details are even more juicy that what they’re reporting today:
Here’s one from February 25, 2025 in Rolling Stone:
The Department of Homeland Security has budgeted up to $200 million to run anti-immigrant ads in the United States and overseas that repeatedly thank President Donald Trump for leading an immigration crackdown. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Friday night that these ads were Trump’s idea, and during the administration’s transition to power, the president asked her to star in ads thanking him “for closing the border.”
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s Ronald Reagan dinner on Friday night — at a tux and gown affair that served striploin, mashed potatoes, and raspberry cake — Noem recalled Trump telling her after she was nominated: “I want you to do [ads] for the border, and I want you to do those everywhere, not just in the United States, but I want them around the world. I want you to tell people not to come to this country if they’re going to come here illegally.”
She said the president continued: “We’re not going to let the media tell this story, because the media will never tell the truth. We’re going to run a marketing campaign to make sure the American people know the truth of what you’re doing.”
The ad campaign amounts to an extremely expensive taxpayer-funded propaganda blitz to scare off migrants and to flatter Trump on television. On Friday, Trump’s DHS secretary entertained the CPAC high-roller audience with her account of how Trump orchestrated the whole thing.
Noem said that Trump instructed that he didn’t want to be in the ads himself, telling her: “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads … but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.” She recalled: “I said, ‘Yes, sir, I will thank you for closing the border.’ So if you notice, in that ad, we thanked him for closing the border.”
Lol! I don’t know about you but Kristi’s story has the ring of truth if only because she so clearly doesn’t understand how much it makes him look like a narcissistic moron.
Of course that’s what he said. He’s always demanding that people thank him. It’s him.