White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Donald Trump has not lost confidence in Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem despite sending border czar Tom Homan to take charge in Minneapolis.
Speaking from the White House podium on Monday, Leavitt suggested that Homan was being sent to deal with the escalating situation because Noem was too busy.
“Secretary Noem still has the utmost confidence and trust of the president of the United States, and she is continuing to oversee the entire Department of Homeland Security and all of the immigration enforcement that’s taking place across the entire country,” Leavitt said.
She then added that Noem is also in charge of FEMA as the U.S. deals with a massive winter storm that swept through over the weekend.
“Border czar Homan is in a unique position to drop everything and go to Minnesota to continue having these productive conversations with state and local officials,” Leavitt said.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Monday that Homan was heading to Minneapolis.
“He has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there. Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me,” Trump wrote.
There have been multiple reports of Homan and Noem bitterly feuding in the past.
While the White House insisted that Trump has not lost confidence in Noem, Leavitt desperately tried to distance the president from his DHS secretary’s comments over the weekend.
Noem accused Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents on Saturday, of domestic terrorism.
But videos showed Pretti had merely been recording on his phone and had attempted to help up a woman who had been shoved to the ground by armed agents before he was tackled and shot multiple times in the middle of the street.
Leavitt said on Monday that Trump has not characterized Pretti as a domestic terrorist and wants the investigation to play out.
The White House press secretary described Homan’s role in heading to Minnesota as the “point person” working with state and local authorities to “achieve the level of cooperation to subdue the chaos in the streets of Minneapolis.”
In a post on Monday, Trump revealed that he had spoken with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. He described it as a “good call” and wrote “we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength.”
The president said he told Walz that Homan would call him, and that the governor was happy to have the border czar heading to his state.
In his own readout of their conversation, Walz described it as productive. He indicated that the president agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in the state and to ensure Minnesota officials can conduct an independent investigation.
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