Noem Hearing: She Won’t Say Trump Lied

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes – "Noem Hearing: She Won’t Say Trump Lied"

Episode Overview

In the May 14, 2025 episode of Bulwark Takes, hosted by Sam Stein and featuring guest Tim Miller, the discussion centers on South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's recent hearing before the House Homeland Security (DHS) Budget Appropriations Committee. The episode delves into Noem's contentious performance, highlighting her interactions with members of Congress, particularly Representatives Eric Swalwell and Dan Goldman. The hosts analyze the implications of Noem's responses, drawing connections to broader political dynamics and the influence of former President Donald Trump on current governmental actions.

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1. Introduction to Kristi Noem's Congressional Hearing

Sam Stein opens the discussion by setting the stage for Kristi Noem's appearance before Congress regarding the DHS budget appropriation. He characterizes Noem's performance as "going sideways pretty badly," suggesting that her testimony revealed the extent to which Cabinet members feel compelled to align with Trump's directives.

Sam Stein [00:00]: "We are here to talk about Kristi Noem, who had a hearing before the members of Congress for the DHS budget appropriations request, and it went sideways pretty badly on multiple occasions."

2. Kristi Noem's Performance and Initial Impressions

Tim Miller expresses skepticism about Noem's presence, initially mistaking her for a wax figure due to her lack of facial expressions during the hearing. This observation underscores his perception of Noem's disengaged and inflexible demeanor.

Tim Miller [00:32]: "She's kind of my favorite to discuss. I was interested when you first sent me the links and said she was appearing in front of Congress. It took me a second because I was trying to decide if that was actually her or there's, like, the hall of Presidents figure of her."

3. Exchange with Representative Eric Swalwell

A significant portion of the episode focuses on Noem's exchange with Rep. Eric Swalwell. Swalwell confronts Noem with a photo purportedly showing DHS Representative Abrego Garcia with MS-13 tattoos, which was alleged to be manipulated under Trump's directive.

Key Moments:

• Swalwell Challenges the Photo's Authenticity:

  Eric Swalwell [01:33]: "Could you look at the photo, please? It's right in front of me."

• Noem Deflects the Inquiry:

  Kristi Noem [02:17]: "Today is on a doctored photo. You don't want to talk about the facts."

• Host Analysis:

  Sam Stein criticizes Noem for refusing to engage with the evidence, suggesting her responses are designed to protect Trump's narrative at all costs.

  Sam Stein [03:10]: "They are afraid to say that Donald Trump was wrong about anything."

Tim Miller further elaborates on the cult-like loyalty Noem exhibits towards Trump, emphasizing her inability to admit any inaccuracies in Trump's statements.

Tim Miller [03:44]: "It's like, no, this is a cult. It's the number one trait of a cult. The cult leader cannot be wrong."

4. Exchange with Representative Dan Goldman

The discussion shifts to Noem's interaction with Dan Goldman, who presses her on the legality of deporting Abrego Garcia, a U.S. citizen's parent with severe health issues.

Key Moments:

• Goldman Advocates for Due Process:

  Dan Goldman [10:45]: "I'm not advocating for him. I'm advocating for a court order. Madam Secretary, the court order says that you must take steps to follow the court order."

• Noem's Response Lacks Substance:

  Kristi Noem [11:08]: "It's got to Be extremely discouraging to be one of your constituents. To see you fight for a terrorist like this and not fight for them is extremely alarming to me."

Sam Stein and Tim Miller interpret Noem's responses as evasive, lacking concrete actions to address the legal and humanitarian concerns raised by Goldman.

5. Analysis and Implications

The hosts explore the broader implications of Noem's testimony, arguing that her inability to provide concrete answers or challenge Trump's narrative undermines the effectiveness of congressional oversight.

Key Insights:

• Marking Agenda with Limited Success:

  Tim Miller [07:31]: "But again, I don't know exactly the whole hearing. So some of that might have happened, but like that would, I think be the most useful."

• Potential for Future Revelations:

  Drawing parallels to the Benghazi hearings, Tim Miller suggests that sustained pressure could lead to significant disclosures, even if initial efforts seem futile.

  Tim Miller [09:22]: "You learn more stuff. And like, by a, like, long kind of butterfly flapping its wings way, that investigation ended up being the thing."

• Importance of Documenting Efforts:

  Sam Stein emphasizes the necessity of maintaining a record of these challenges, even when immediate results are absent.

  Sam Stein [10:20]: "It's important to have the record show that you're pushing for it."

6. Other Notable Moments and Broader Context

The episode briefly touches on other members of Congress, including Mayor Pete Buttigieg's remarks on due process, highlighting ongoing debates about legal protections and governmental authority.

Pete Buttigieg [13:15]: "Due process is afforded to everybody because it is through that due process that our society can make decisions, including challenging decisions about what happens to you if you are, in fact, held to be in violation of the law..."

Sam Stein and Tim Miller critique Buttigieg's stance, questioning its consistency and potential implications.

7. Concluding Thoughts

Sam Stein wraps up the discussion by reinforcing the importance of these congressional hearings in maintaining governmental accountability. He acknowledges the challenges faced when in the minority but stresses that persistent efforts are crucial for upholding the rule of law and exposing potential abuses.

Sam Stein [13:58]: "Another one of Biden's missed opportunities, I suppose."

Final Reflections

The episode of Bulwark Takes provides a detailed examination of Kristi Noem's contentious hearing, highlighting the struggles within the DHS to navigate post-Trump political landscapes. Through incisive analysis and critical questioning, Sam Stein and Tim Miller underscore the importance of congressional oversight and the need for transparency within governmental departments. The discussion encapsulates the tension between adhering to former administrations' directives and upholding democratic principles and legal standards.

Transcript

[Sam Stein]

Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullock, and I'm joined by Tim Miller. We are here to talk about Kristi Noem, who had a hearing before the members of Congress for the DHS budget appropriations request, and it went sideways pretty badly on multiple occasions and provided some interesting insights into how members of the Cabinet feel they must tap dance around Dear Leader Donald Trump. Before we get into that. Subscribe to the feed. All right, Tim, this is your favorite cabinet secretary? This is.

[Tim Miller]

Is she my favorite? I. I don't know. She's kind of my favorite to discuss. I was interested when you first sent me the links and said she was appearing in front of Congress. It took me a second because I was trying to decide if that was actually her or there's, like, the hall of Presidents figure of her, because sometimes it is hard to tell with the lack of facial movements, whether it's. Whether it's really her.

[Sam Stein]

How do I do this?

[Tim Miller]

What was the thing?

[Sam Stein]

Every time.

[Tim Miller]

Do you remember? You ever been to the hall of Presidents at Disney World? They still got that.

[Sam Stein]

I have been there. I've also been to, you know, whatever. Madame Trousseau's Wax. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Do you have anything else to add?

[Tim Miller]

Well, I thought it was a pretty bad performance. Why don't we go to the clips and we'll take them.

[Sam Stein]

Which one do you want to start with? Swalwell or Gummen?

[Tim Miller]

Sweet Swalwell, please.

[Sam Stein]

Okay, let's do Swallow set up here. Eric Swalwell brandishing a photo of Abrego Garcia that Donald Trump insisted showed a tattooed hand and was clearly photoshopped and then this transpired.

[Eric Swalwell]

Could you look at the photo, please? It's right in front of me.

[Kristi Noem]

Are you saying Abrego Garcia is not a wife?

[Eric Swalwell]

No, ma' am.

[Kristi Noem]

Not a criminal. He's not a human trafficker, not a.

[Eric Swalwell]

Member of Ms. You vouched for Mr. Garcia when your team sent. Ma' am. You vouched for him when you said he was mistakenly deported. I didn't vouch for him.

[Kristi Noem]

I did not say in that photo been deported. Absolutely.

[Eric Swalwell]

It's so telling that you won't look.

[Kristi Noem]

At the photo and we will not be bringing.

[Eric Swalwell]

Was it doctored or not?

[Kristi Noem]

In staying here, can you look to.

[Eric Swalwell]

Your right at the photo in front of you? Madam Secretary, can you look to the right at the photo in front of you?

[Kristi Noem]

I have seen this photo as you held it behind your head.

[Eric Swalwell]

Thank you. And the letters, miss and the numbers 13, are those doctored or not testimony.

[Kristi Noem]

Today is on a doctored photo. You don't want to talk about the facts.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so you.

[Kristi Noem]

Of our national security, you acknowledge it was Dr. Make sure that the United States is protected.

[Eric Swalwell]

Madam Secretary, this is not a hard question. Are those doctored or not?

[Tim Miller]

Is that.

[Eric Swalwell]

Is that actually on his hand or not?

[Kristi Noem]

This is unbelievable to me that you're focused.

[Eric Swalwell]

It's unbelievable to me that you can't look at the photo and tell the.

[Kristi Noem]

American people the photo, but I don't have any knowledge as to this photo.

[Eric Swalwell]

Okay, so it's been hanging out there for four weeks. You are one of the chief law enforcement officials in the country. What have you done to investigate whether the president misrepresented the reason that that person has been detained? Have you done anything to try and figure out whether that was doctored or not?

[Kristi Noem]

The mission of the Department of Homeland Security is to secure our nation and to make sure that we're out there going after those that are the worst of the worst, the criminals, the bad actors. Abrego Garcia.

[Eric Swalwell]

So the answer is, you've done nothing.

[Kristi Noem]

To correct the president, Ms. 13, a wife beater and a human trafficker that should never have been in this country to begin with.

[Sam Stein]

So, yeah, that one was crazy to me, much more than the other one, because it's like she just. She refused to look at it. And she's like.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, please, ma' am, please turn to your right. Maybe she can't turn to her right. I don't know. That might be kind of part of the side effects the. Of the reconstruction surgery. The. Here's the thing with this. This is what it is. They are afraid to say that Donald Trump was wrong about anything.

[Sam Stein]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

And this is why. This is why, you know, it's like, oh, you have tds. Oh, you're in a liberal bubble. Oh, you crazy libs. When you call us cultists, it's just whatever. It's like, no, this is a cult. It's the number one trait of a cult. The cult leader cannot be wrong. And, like, you are in a cult. Like, there was. There was never any time where, you know, when I worked for a candidate where I couldn't say, oops, you know, we missed on that one, and, like, moved on, you know, like, she can't just simply say, and she doesn't even have to say, donald Trump was wrong when he said it was. Ms. 13. Like, you could even do a plausible defense of this where he's like, well, Trump was just pointing out that the tattoos stand for MS.13. Like you could do that thing. Which would have been a lie, but at least it would have been a face saving lie.

[Sam Stein]

Actually said Trump. Trump actually said, there is MS.13 right there on the.

[Tim Miller]

Have you not seen. Then he got mad at ABC reporter Terry Moran. He got mad at Terry and he's like, terry, it's like, this is why people think you're the fake news. You won't just acknowledge that it said Ms. 13. And it's like, no, that's a Times New Roman. Like, and, and the one, my one critique of swallow is awesome here is he kept saying it's doctored. Wasn't really doctor. They just put, just, they just took his hand and they, they typed MS.13 on the finger. So I guess that's.

[Sam Stein]

I did appreciate. I did appreciate that he identified the font.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

[Sam Stein]

He didn't Times New Roman.

[Tim Miller]

The whole thing.

[Sam Stein]

Everyone knows that ms.13 likes Ariel fonts.

[Tim Miller]

Come on. Whoever was making the picture wasn' trying to doctorate Trump is just so stupid that he didn't understand, like, what they were trying to do, which was, which was delineate what allegedly each of those tattoos represented. And so, like, she could have just done any of it, but she refuses. She refused to just be like, Mr. You know, no. Or she couldn't have even not mentioned Trump at all. She could have looked at that and said, no, look, I look at that and that obviously Ms. 13 someone typed on there, but conceivably the tattoos could represent that. I'm not an MS.13 tattoo expert. That would have been a fine answer. And she was like, but any inch you give centimeter that might be interpreted as having a headline saying, kristi Noem says Trump was wrong about the MS.13 tattoos. Like, that is a risk that is not worth taking because you don't want to be cast.

[Sam Stein]

To me, that says more about Trump, honestly, that he can't handle even that and would never want to admit he's wrong. But we were sort of debating in the office whether this was the right and effective use of Swalwell's time. And I think so, because I don't think you're going to get anything out of her because she's not interested in having an actual engaged conversation about issues like due process and deportations and actually what the budget should be used for. I mean, she's not what she's there for. So you do need to make. If it's going to be a spectacle, you have to make a spectacle.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to watch the entire hearing. So I say that. So it's possible other, other members did this. I think that that is one useful thing is like just pointing out that like the arguments that they're making with this are untrue. Just getting that on the record, you couldn't, you couldn't do that. And I think embarrassing her like that is maybe at least useful, just as far as I took pleasure from it. But to me, I think that one thing that would be useful and there are just always so many things to ask these guys, but to continue to put the drumbeat of can you provide me the detailed evidence for why Neri Alvarado was deported? And she's going to say, no, we reviewed all these people and they're all on S13. And you're like, please submit to the committee the evidence that you guys provided. And whatever it can be, we can do it in a classified way. You know, Right. There are classified versions of these committees. Like, but submit to me the evidence. You know the makeup artist Andre Hernandez. Submit to me the evidence that was used to determine that he was a Trenda Aragua gang member. Like to me, like that. And again, I don't know exactly the whole hearing. So some of that might have happened, but like that would, I think be the most useful.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. So there was one moment, and I'm going to not have the right names here, but representative Magaziner who said to Noam, look, you deported this mother and her four year old and seven year old who were US Citizens. Four year old had stage four cancer and you testified or the DHS asserted that the mother signed off on having her kids deported with her. He's like, but I've talked to the lawyer directly and the lawyer says that's patently not true. Can you send me the evidence that you had to justify the decision to deport this kid to say that the mother had signed off in it. And she said, we will provide it to you. So yeah. Now does she follow through? I don't know, but I thought that was to your point. Like. Yeah, I mean, the idea here is you need to sort of surface whatever information you can about what is the rationalization for their deportation regime. And if you can't do it, then you do need to expose just how insane some of the decision making process is.

[Tim Miller]

And here's why they're going to fight this. Okay, because. And here's why it's important to engage in this fight. Right. And this is outside of the electoral politics framework. This is about the immigration policy framework. Because it's important to have this fight because if you can continue to pressure them on these specific examples, you know, and, and, and you get one, right. This is why they don't, they don't want to give on a Burgo Garcia, and this is why they don't want to give on anybody else. Right. Like, if you can, if information can be surfaced, official information, there are still career employees a lot of these places, you know, and you have a career employee at the DHS that like, does what they're supposed to do, submits the documents to the, to the congressional committee. Then the congressional committee goes and says, here was their evidence that Andre was a gang member. It's these tattoos. But these tattoos are not like. And then if, if the dam breaks, right? Like, in theory, like, maybe they will never break. The dam breaks in theory. And I just go back to. You hate to ever give the Republicans credit for anything, but especially unlike their. Some of their absurd stuff they did around Benghazi. But like, the Benga, this is how Benghazi worked, right? Like, like the Democrats kept making fun of the Republicans. Oh, you're so obsessed with Benghazi. Nobody cares about Benghazi. But all those hearings that Trey Gowdy had, like, eventually by law lawyers and whatever department officials made the government turn stuff over, you learned more stuff. And like, by a, like, long kind of butterfly flapping its wings way, that investigation ended up being the thing that, that got people, that got the Anthony Weiner laptop, you know, that, that led.

[Sam Stein]

To the many butterflies Hillary's emails discovered.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. That led to the James Comey press conference. Right. So, like, you just don't know. You know what I mean? So, like, it's important to do that stuff to continue to rather, you know.

[Sam Stein]

And so I think you're limited when you're in the minority, but it's important to have the record show that you're pushing for it. The only other notable moment came when Dan Goldman was talking, impressing Christina. And, you know, this was about the legality of what's happening with the Brega Garcia. And it really sort of crystallized how this fight is being waged.

[Kristi Noem]

Brago Garcia is in his home country.

[Dan Goldman]

What steps have you taken if your.

[Kristi Noem]

Continued advocacy for him were to.

[Dan Goldman]

I'm not advocating for him. I'm advocating for a court order. Madam Secretary, the court order says that you must take steps to follow the court order. You are here under oath. What steps have you taken to return Mr. Abrego Garcia pursuant to this court order?

[Kristi Noem]

It's got to Be extremely discouraging to be one of your constituents. To see you fight for a terrorist like this and not fight for them is extremely alarming to me.

[Dan Goldman]

I'm fighting for due process, and that's under the Constitution, gentlemen. Fight to due process.

[Sam Stein]

So, I mean, to me, this is it. It's like, this is the. This is the essence of the argument, and it's. Who can be more convincing in this argument? And I, you know, I'm partial to the rule of law and the Constitution affecting the court, obviously. But, like, you know, who am I? I'm just.

[Tim Miller]

One way to put off your shirt. Take off your journalist hat, your unbiased journalist hat there.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, I know.

[Tim Miller]

Show a little leg.

[Sam Stein]

This is new ground for me. No, but to me, that, I mean, do. Would Gnome's argument be persuasive for a lot of people?

[Tim Miller]

Probably. Yeah. No, so I think probably would be the precise. A lot of people. And I think in part of it, the like, oh, even if he comes back, he gets deported again.

[Sam Stein]

But to me, well, that's bullshit. It's not true. Because he. By the other Supreme Court decision, he has to have some habeas corpus hearing, but whatever.

[Tim Miller]

And also, like, the stop. I forget the technical term, but there was like a stop deportation order on him, basically, because it was like, he can't be sent to El Salvador.

[Sam Stein]

Right. I think she was saying, well, we'll send them to, you know, Libya. Libya.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we'll send Libya. Great. You know, again, I think that as far as a political framework is concerned, the Democrats are best suited to stay on the ground of, you don't want the government having this kind of power, pulling people off the streets, sending them to foreign prisons. The Joe Rogan argument, like, that's the best argument that Democrats have politically. But like, in. In a congressional hearing such as this, you don't. The Democrats don't always need to be making, like, the optimized TV ad argument.

[Eric Swalwell]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

And there's a policy argument that could be made that is where Dan Goldman is going again, for the purpose of trying to, like, get more cracks in the, in the facade here in order to try to yield some results.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. Did you see Mayor Pete's handling of this question last night?

[Pete Buttigieg]

Due process is afforded to everybody because it is through that due process that our society can make decisions, including challenging decisions about what happens to you if you are, in fact, held to be in violation of the law, as ironically happened to the president himself when he went through probable cause, due process, jury, all that he got. Due process.

[Sam Stein]

It was a classic Mayor Pete.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, boy. That was a classic Mayor Pete line. But in a rare case, Mayor Pete has me maybe convinced of taking the other side of that, which is like, maybe we shouldn't have given Donald Trump due process. The idea of Donald Trump in El Salvador sounds pretty good. Wow, that's bad.

[Sam Stein]

Another one of Biden's missed opportunities, I suppose. All right, Tim. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching. Tune into our feed for stuff like this. We will talk to you soon.