One aide's exit spotlights the Noem mess |
The exit of Tricia McLaughlin as spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security is ultimately a trivial matter. But McLaughlin’s combative presence through the first year of the second Trump administration became an emblem of the contention and chaos that the agency has been generating.
For the opaque and unwieldy ICE program aimed at deporting millions of people, McLaughlin has been a key front person for her boss, Secretary Kristi Noem.
Public relations cannot be going too well when one cellphone video after another shows ugly encounters that the department’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fails to fully account for — and when only 38% of respondents now tell a Reuters/Ipsos poll Trump is doing a good job on immigration. As McLaughlin said herself, "It’s a PR war." She was on the losing side.
Even before last month’s calamities in Minnesota the professional conduct of Noem’s stewardship at DHS was in question. Strategy Group, an advertising firm........