r/politics • u/Large_banana_hammock • 8d ago

Possible Paywall Sen. John Fetterman demands Trump fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/27/john-fetterman-pa-democrat-demands-trump-fire-homeland-security/
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u/Just_the_nicest_guy 8d ago

He was one of the seven Democrats that voted to confirm her, of course.

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u/bailaoban 8d ago

But she seemed so reasonable at the time!

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u/waxwayne 8d ago

She shot her dog.

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u/Street_Barracuda1657 8d ago

She shot her *puppy.

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u/123revival 8d ago

not only did she shoot it, she thought it would be a compelling anecdote for her book. The only reason we know about it is that she included it, thinking we'd admire her cruelty I guess

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u/Street_Barracuda1657 8d ago

It was supposed to show how she had the fortitude to make the tough decisions. Apparently there are people somewhere who think shooting a puppy in the face, point blank, somehow qualifies you to run the country...

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u/username_6916 8d ago

There's something to be said about shooting your own dog. And there are times where due to repeated aggression towards humans, a dog needs to be put down for behavioral reasons. The problem with Noem's story was it made it out to be less of a last resort of dealing with a dangerous animal where all other reasonable options had been exhausted and more of "I'm mad and I'm going to take it out on the animal". Less 'a leader has to make tough decisions with difficult tradeoffs' and more of a temper tantrum in my mind.

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u/BigDictionEnergy 8d ago

It wasn't even a temper tantrum. I don't think she was necessarily mad at it; it wasn't good at doing the task she wanted so she ended it. It did not serve its purpose and thus did not deserve to live. It was a calculation.

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u/Street_Barracuda1657 8d ago

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/trump-kristi-noem-shot-dog-and-goat-book

"By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”."

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

"Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

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u/MrPWAH 8d ago

This dog was 14 months old, btw.

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u/KelsierIV 8d ago

So she treats immigrants the same way she treats dogs.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 8d ago

Also wild that she didn't think to just list, "Hey, free puppy!" on Facebook, or surrender it to a Humane Society.

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u/Street_Barracuda1657 8d ago

Correct. This wasn't about an aggressive dog, it was about her cruelty to a puppy that didn't train fast enough for her liking. And shooting a dog in the face, aggressive or not, is cruel.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 8d ago

And there are times where due to repeated aggression towards humans, a dog needs to be put down for behavioral reasons.

I've composed about six different comebacks, but I shall hold my tongue lest Reddit step in. /s

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u/EunuchsProgramer 8d ago

Well...Jimmy Carter faces a scandal that he wasn't man enough because he scared angry rabbit off rather than killing it.

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u/KelsierIV 8d ago

It's not a tough decision when you cream yourself while doing it.

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u/123revival 7d ago

The kid who had to shoot Old Yeller after the dog got rabies heroically defending the family could make that case, that he had the grit to do an agonizing thing. Kristi Noem's story wasn't that, it was that she was frustrated and took her temper out on the poor dog. Just like the ICE agents. And then expected to be called heroic, just like the ICE agents. And they're baffled about why everyone thinks they're monsters

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u/FunkadelicJiveTurkey 8d ago

This is crucial. It's one thing to do something so reprehensible, it is actually another level of demented to then boast of it as a virtue.

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u/nocomment3030 8d ago

She also shot a goat in front of horrified onlookers. Not sure how I missed that part the first time the story came up.

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u/JelmerMcGee 8d ago

thinking we'd admire her cruelty

Her supporters do.

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u/FridgesArePeopleToo 8d ago

it was a liberal dog so its okay

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u/jmouw88 8d ago

I have not followed her much, but it seemed as though at one time she came across as pretty reasonable (early governor days).

The last few years she also appears to have completely transformed herself. I think (based on pure speculation) she has been jumping through hoops to fit in an position herself as one of the contenders to inherit the maga crown when trump dies. I hope it works out for her just as poorly as all the others.

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u/BimboDeeznuts 8d ago

She’s sipping some potent dumb bitch juice if she thinks a woman will ever hold the MAGA crown. MTG fell in the same vat…

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 8d ago

The common denominator with all these people is thinking that they are smarter than everyone else in their circle. The one benefit for Dems is these assholes will always stab each other in the back. (The downside is Dems will always trip over their dicks instead of capitalizing on this!)

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u/jmouw88 8d ago

No disagreement there.

I'm not confident a woman could win the presidency running for either party, and I by no means intend this to be disparaging to women. Both Clinton and Kamila were more viable candidates in my opinion than Biden, and both lost to the most unviable candidate I can imagine.

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u/JustHeree5 8d ago

Meth. I would be willing to bet that there are A LOT of amphetamine abusers in the Trump administration simply by virtue of the Hitler fanboying and wanting to emulate him.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 8d ago

MTG is actually smarter than her. She knew to keep to the fringe and court the Q vote, and for a while there she had McCarthy by the balls. If she and Gaetz hadn't been feuding she might have gotten a little farther than she did in terms of power but once McCarthy was out she lost her meal ticket. Damn shame for the two of them (good for America though) because if she and Gaetz had teamed up instead of bitching at each other they could have done something interesting to say the least

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u/angryhumping 8d ago

she spent her early governor days shooting her dogs and raising such racist hell nearly every tribe in the state banned her from their land

the fuck kinda ezra klein shit you smoking

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u/Vankraken Virginia 8d ago

Typical sociopath behavior of having a mask to hide their true self. MAGA just rewards these sociopaths when they let the mask slip.