President Donald Trump gave Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem the cold shoulder as he went around the room touting his top officials on Thursday.
The DHS secretary was in attendance for Trump’s Cabinet meeting at the White House, but the president did not call on her to speak or even acknowledge her presence there.
Noem looked grim-faced as she listened to her colleagues.
She has been under fire from members of both parties as the administration faces intense fallout after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis less than a week ago.
During the roughly 80-minute televised portion of the meeting, Trump called on several Cabinet members to speak.
But despite immigration being one of Trump’s top priorities, it barely got a mention during Thursday’s meeting as the public turned on the administration over its crackdown and U.S. citizens being killed by ICE.
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were all called on to speak.
Others like Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins all got shoutouts or were acknowledged in some way.
“Pam, you’re doing great,” Trump told the attorney general.
He also invited Vice President JD Vance to say a few words.
While Trump indicated during the meeting that he would not be calling on every Cabinet member to speak, as he has in the past, because the meetings were “boring,” not including Noem or mentioning her in any way stood out, as the administration is up against the ropes because of ICE.
Noem is facing calls to resign or face impeachment after she called Pretti a domestic terrorist right after he was killed on Saturday.
Even the White House this week rushed to distance the president from Noem’s comments amid the fallout.
As tensions escalated on the streets of Minneapolis and Trump’s approval on immigration plummets, the president announced he was sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota this week despite publicly insisting he has not soured on his DHS secretary.
Trump on Wednesday told reporters that Noem was doing a “very good job” and said she would not step down, but the shake-up of his team in Minneapolis was a stark acknowledgment of the challenges the administration now faced.
Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski both called for Noem to step down. Other GOP lawmakers have demanded an independent investigation into Pretti’s killing.
The White House is also making the rare move to negotiate with Senate Democrats over government funding in a scramble to avoid a partial shutdown in less than 48 hours.
Democrats called for the DHS funding to be removed from the larger package and renegotiated in the wake of the latest killing by ICE.
On Thursday, Trump indicated they were closing in on a deal, as the vote on the full six-bill package with that funding failed.
The post ICE Barbie Frozen Out by Trump at Suck-Up Cabinet Meeting appeared first on The Daily Beast.
