Secretary, I read your book last week, and honestly, some parts really impressed me, but others really upset me. I’ll give you a good example of one that did,” Tillis said during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The part where you talk about killing a dog that was 14 months old. I train dogs, and you’re a farmer.”
Noem famously bragged in her book that she killed her dog Cricket in a gravel pit because he had an “aggressive personality” and she “hated” him.
Even worse, she claimed that the act showed her leadership skills. In reality, it only showed her lack of empathy and her desire to use everything in her life for political gain.
Tillis has criticized the Homeland Security Secretary before, calling her a “bootlicker” and criticizing her quick rush to label Alexi Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” after he was killed by her masked agents.
“You should know better,” Tillis continued.
“You should know that if you’re going to a hunting lodge and you’re putting out pheasants and dogs, you don’t take a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you hadn’t invested the right time and training, then you have the nerve to write in your book that it’s a lesson about making tough choices. It’s in your book. We could play it if we had time.”
“At the same lunch hour, you killed a goat and you killed it because you said it was behaving badly.
You are a farmer. You don’t castrate a goat,” he went on. “They behave badly. You should have done that before, but my point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened in Minneapolis.”
“I expect we’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is because we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve shown anything but that in the time I’ve seen you responding to the emergency in North Carolina and across the southeast.
You acknowledge when mistakes are made, but you speak too soon for the sake of social media or whatever it is,” said Tillis.
The senator has criticized Noem in the past for her leadership at FEMA due to the agency’s poor handling of Hurricane Helene.
There isn’t one area of her duties where she has performed well.
Towards the end of his remarks, Tillis presented a letter from the Office of the Inspector General listing ten different instances where they were “misled and not allowed to pursue investigations they think are critically important.”
“Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly?”
said Tillis. “That’s stonewalling. That’s a failure of leadership and that’s why I’ve called for your resignation.”
At that point, the room began to applaud.
“And if I don’t get an answer to these questions, I don’t want an applause,” said Tillis.
“Please don’t do that for me. If I don’t get an answer to these questions, if I don’t get an answer that you’ve had a month to respond to and the remaining ones, as of today, I’ll be informing leadership that I’m putting a hold on any on-block nominations until I get a response.”
“And in two weeks, if I don’t get a response, I’m going to deny quorum and markup in as many committees as I can until I get a response.
Thank you, Mr. Chair,” Tillis concluded.
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