March 8, 2026
The Department of Homeland Security had its worst week since its founding — and that’s saying something given it was founded specifically because the U.S. government failed to prevent 9/11. Kristi Noem got torched alive on Capitol Hill for two straight days, refused to deny under oath that she was sleeping with her married adviser Corey Lewandowski, used $220 million of your tax money to put herself on horseback in front of Mount Rushmore like a mediocre Marlboro ad, and then got fired by the guy who hired her via Truth Social while she was literally mid-speech in Nashville, blissfully pretending nothing had happened.
Her replacement? Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin — the second dumbest person in the United States Senate after Tommy Tuberville, a man so deep in the MAGA tank he recently tried to convince reporters that calling the Iran operation a “war” was a misspoke. His exact words. Misspoke. By himself. Multiple times. On camera.
Steve Schmidt and I talked through all of it, and it was a ride.
What We Covered
The Noem Implosion
Kristi Noem went to Congress to defend herself and instead handed her enemies a blowtorch. On Tuesday, she told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump personally approved a $220 million ad campaign — a campaign that featured her, prominently, on horseback, like she was auditioning to be a Western movie villain. The White House immediately denied it. The President, we’re told, was very upset.
Then on Wednesday she sat for nearly seven hours in front of the House Judiciary Committee, where Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove asked her point-blank whether she had “sexual relations” with Corey Lewandowski. Noem called it “tabloid garbage.” She said the “socialist liberal left” attacks conservative women by calling them stupid or — and I’m paraphrasing only slightly — promiscuous. What she did not do, in seven hours, on live television, under oath, was say no.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz gave her three opportunities to just say the word no. She declined each time, pivoting instead to speeches about being a strong conservative woman. Which, sure — but “no” is also one word and requires no speech.
The affair has been the worst-kept secret in Washington for years. A forthcoming book by NBC News reporter Julia Ainsley describes how Noem and Lewandowski regularly flew around the country together in a luxury 737 with a private cabin in the back. When Noem tried to install him as her chief of staff, the White House vetoed it — because the affair rumors were already too hot. He was instead designated a “special government employee,” which allowed him to sign off on DHS contracts and, according to multiple current and former employees, essentially run things out of Noem’s back pocket.
The whole operation was a mess. Minneapolis was a mess. FEMA was a mess. The $220 million horseback vanity project was a mess. The alleged affair and the conflict of interest that came with it? A mess with a capital M.
Trump fired her Thursday afternoon and called it a “culmination of many unfortunate leadership failures.”
He kicked her upstairs to something called “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” which is either a real job or a title he invented to soften the blow. Jury’s still out.
Bryon Noem: A Profile in Modern Martyrdom
Here’s where it gets dark and also, frankly, kind of sad.
Bryon Noem — South Dakota rancher, insurance man, and husband — sat directly behind his wife at the House Judiciary hearing while she was being grilled about a years-long alleged affair. He had attended to show support. He left early to catch a flight. He was out the door maybe thirty minutes before his wife was asked if she’d had sex with her married advisor on national television.
His family subsequently went to the New York Post — which is not something you do when things are going well at home — to explain that Bryon decided roughly twenty years ago that it was “his calling from God” to support Kristi in whatever she chose to do. That he has “put up with the humiliation.” That they hope he finally faces reality.
“What gets me,” one family member said, “is she couldn’t say no.”
Bryon Noem is not a political figure and I have nothing but sympathy for the man. Nobody deserves to have their marriage publicly dissected in a congressional hearing. But that’s the world Kristi built, and now everyone’s living in it.
Steve and I called it like we saw it: Bryon is a guy whose faith has been weaponized against him by someone who treats his loyalty as a blank cheque. There’s a word for that in the internet age — we used it on the show — CUCK.
Now Byron has to move the cuck chair…
Markwayne Mullin: America’s Dumbest Upgrade
Trump’s replacement pick is Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, whom the President described as “a MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter” — a sentence that tells you everything you need to know about how DHS secretary qualifications work in this administration.
Mullin didn’t even serve on the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He found out about the nomination roughly fifteen minutes before the rest of America. His reaction to reporters was that he needed “to talk to my wife first,” which, given the context of the week, landed differently than he intended.
What Mullin does have going for him is total, unconditional fealty to Donald Trump. He defends everything. He explains everything. He goes on television and argues that war isn’t war. Earlier this week, when reporters pointed out that Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Mullin himself had all called the Iran operation a “war,” Mullin declared: “That was a misspoke.”
Not we misspoke. Not I misspoke. That was a misspoke. As a noun. As if “misspoke” is a thing that just happens in nature, like weather, rather than a choice made by a man who says words out loud.
Steve Schmidt did not have kind things to say about this appointment. Neither did I. We’re not going to pretend that replacing one catastrophically unqualified loyalist with a different catastrophically unqualified loyalist is a step forward for the homeland security of 340 million Americans.
The War With Iran (Which Is Not Called A War)
The other enormous thing we covered: the escalating U.S.-Iran conflict that the administration insists on not calling a war, despite the fact that it very much is one.
Steve and I talked through the strategic logic — or lack thereof — of what’s happening. The U.S. is prosecuting military operations against Iran while simultaneously trying to yoke MAGA identity to Israeli interests in a way that has become almost theological. Supporting Israel isn’t a foreign policy position in MAGA world anymore — it’s a loyalty test. A sacrament. And that fusion is doing real damage to America’s ability to think clearly about what it actually wants in the Middle East.
The Iran situation is not resolved. The munitions question is not resolved. The question of what “winning” looks like is not resolved. And the guy who’s going to be running DHS — the agency with a prominent counterterrorism mandate — is an MMA enthusiast from Oklahoma who calls wars “a misspoke.”
Sleep well.
If you missed it live, go watch the full conversation. Steve Schmidt doesn’t pull punches, and neither do I, and this week gave us more material than we could burn through in three hours.
About Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt is the founder and host of The Warning, one of the most widely-read political newsletters in America. A former senior Republican strategist who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, Schmidt became one of the earliest and most forceful voices warning about the authoritarian trajectory of the Trump movement. His analysis is sharp, historically grounded, and — fair warning — not for people who want to feel okay about things right now.
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