President Trump is not subject to brain rot.
Kristi Noem was captured by brain rot, the online incentive structure that causes people to do dumb things for clicks and ubiquity. She’s not the only one. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Gavin Newsom are all terminal brain rot patients.
But Trump is not. And so he fired Kristi Noem, who took the president’s single most popular issue and proceeded to run it directly into the ground.
In April 2025, President Trump’s approval rating on his handling of border security and immigration was 49%. Strong disapproval was just 34%, according to NBC News. By February 2026, according to the same NBC News poll, his approval on the issue had dropped to 40%, and strong disapproval had jumped 15 points to 49%.
That takes some doing, but somehow Kristi Noem achieved it.
The problem wasn’t Trump’s actual immigration policy, which remains highly popular. Americans still want large-scale deportations, but they would like to focus on criminals first. The moment that Noem was replaced in Minneapolis by White House border czar Tom Homan, the Democratic hysterics stopped.
That’s not because Democrats suddenly became good-hearted border hawks on this issue. It’s because Tom Homan does what good administrators should. He quietly goes about his job in a calm, collected fashion. He actually implements policies. He doesn’t make the story about himself.
That’s the opposite of Kristi Noem, who was into photo ops, which may play well online for people who get very excited about performative politics, but do not play particularly well in mainstream America.
She called Renee Good a domestic terrorist and did it again with Alex Pretti, who similarly was shot by federal agents while resisting arrest. I agree that both the Good and the Pretti shoots were legally justifiable. But do I think either of them was a domestic terrorist with mass murder on their minds?
I don’t, and most Americans don’t.
But Kristi Noem proceeded to put the administration in an unwinnable public relations position by going whole hog. And she blamed everybody else in the administration for it, and then denied doing it.
In fact, she apparently spent some $220 million on an ad campaign featuring — wait for it — Kristi Noem.
She apparently put together a sweetheart deal for her friends to produce exactly those commercials.
Noem testified in front of the Senate that President Trump had cleared this use of taxpayer funds.
I do not think President Trump sat there and greenlit that commercial.
It’s one thing to direct cash to your friends, to make commercials to burnish your future presidential run. It’s another thing to then turn around and blame President Trump for that outlay.
And that wasn’t Noem’s only scandal, of course.
Obviously, the most salacious scandal involving Noem was her relationship with Corey Lewandowski, which pretty much everybody in D.C. knows likely goes well beyond the platonic.
The pair have apparently been using a luxury 737 Max jet with a private cabin in the back for their travel around the country. DHS is leasing that plane. Now they’re trying to acquire it for $70 million.
The bottom line is that Kristi Noem was not doing a good job, and it was past time for her to go.
President Trump announced yesterday that he would be replacing her with Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin. He put out a statement: “I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026. The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”
Democrats, of course, are trying to claim victory.
Gavin Newsom, fresh off of whatever anti-Israel podcast he can find, is trying to regain those hard-Left voters, saying that Noem’s firing represents a sort of retreat by the administration. He said:
“Donald Trump is in retreat. Today is a perfect example of that. With the first firing of a high-profile cabinet member, he’s in retreat, places like Minnesota, because the steel spine of citizens that stood up, real patriots in this country pushed back against all that, and you’re seeing it globally. You’re exactly right. That’s why Trump is acting out as he always does: Weakness masquerading as strength.”
But this, of course, is incredibly stupid. Trump is not retreating. He is making a smart adjustment. You think Markwayne Mullin is going to be soft on the border?
It’s obviously the right move.
And it gives an important lesson: Addiction to the clicks and the giggles of the internet rots your brain and leaves you on the wrong side of normal Americans.
Up to and including President Trump.
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