@#6 [continued] ....
Kennedy talks slow. He asks questions slow. He lets silence do the heavy lifting while the witness thinks they're getting away with something. They are not getting away with something.
He wanted to know about $220 million.
That's how much DHS spent on television advertisements during a government shutdown. A shutdown where TSA workers weren't getting paid. A shutdown happening while the United States is at war with Iran. Two hundred and twenty million dollars.
On ads.
Featuring Kristi Noem.
"How do you square that concern for waste," Kennedy asked, his voice somewhere between a Louisiana front porch and a federal courthouse, "with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently?"
Noem said the president told her to get the word out.
Kennedy raised an eyebrow that contained multitudes. "Well," he said, "they were effective in your name recognition."
He then noted that one of the companies that got the contract " Save America Media " was created eleven days before receiving it. That its head was the husband of Noem's former spokesperson. That other contractors had worked on her campaigns back in South Dakota.
Noem said that wasn't correct.
"I think it is," Kennedy said.
Then came the kill shot, delivered the way Kennedy delivers everything " like he's got nowhere to be and nothing to lose.
He read her own words back to her. On the record. January 27th. Noem, explaining away her "domestic terrorism" remarks after Minneapolis, said: "Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen."
Stephen Miller. The White House deputy chief of staff.
"You blamed those statements on Mr. Stephen Miller," Kennedy said.
Noem said that was anonymous sourcing.
"This wasn't anonymous," Kennedy said. "It was you."
Noem's allegation could have serious consequences for Miller once the presidency is over and the oversight chickens come to roost on the lawlessness that's defined DHS throughout Trump's terms in the White House.
In the end, there's a word for what happened in that room today, and the word is accountability. It's a word that gets thrown around so often in Washington that it has almost lost its meaning. Almost.
Today it meant something. Two Republicans " not broken migrant families, not the families of Renee Good or Alex Pretti, though God knows they all deserve answers " sat across from the woman running the nation's immigration apparatus and told her plainly: you are not fit for this job.
The migrants at the southern border didn't send Tillis or Kennedy. Nobody lobbied them. Nobody organized a march for them to attend.
They just looked at what's been done in America's name " the dead bodies, the wasted money, the stonewalled investigators, the dead dog invoked as a leadership seminar " and they decided they'd had enough.
That's not nothing. It might even be the beginning of something. But it's hopefully the end of something, too: Kristi Noem's embarrassing tenure as security of Homeland Security. ...
The most spineless behavior was immediately after J6. Several Republicans caught in the moment were reacting naturally and honestly, blaming Trump and his enabling traitors. Then, they all went silent. Those of us who aren't brainwashed noticed the uneasy eye-of-hurricane moment, and recognized that they were waiting for their orders, to see how Faux Nooze and other popular right-wing propaganda would spin it. Sure enough, the next thing we knew, it was a "protest that got a little out of hand".
They gambled that enough Americans would be brainwashed fools, and they were right