A day after calling for Noem’s resignation, the North Carolina Senator hammered Kosplain Klanswoman Kristi and Trump’s white supremacist homonculus to media over their appalling statements and conduct.
“Senator, you have confidence in Secretary Noem?” asked a reporter. “None at all. We’ve done a Trump 1 vs. Trump 2 comparison of disaster relief. There’s no comparison whatsoever. Trump 1 was right on with disaster recovery, if you think about [Hurricanes] Matthew and Florence. And this one…
“She’s not even handling the other part of her job. I mean, at one point she thought FEMA should be eliminated. To give you an idea of how incompetent I think she is, she actually thought FEMA should be eliminated. And when she had a FEMA director who said he didn’t think that was a good idea, she fired him within 24 hours. Now she understands that that is an important part of her job. These are like amateurish assistant managers sort of.”
“Stephen Miller is in the same boat. This guy, after doing the stupid comments he made about Greenland, getting the president in a difficult circumstances, one of the people that came out publicly and said that this guy was a terrorist before he’d even talked with anybody on the ground. And that’s clearly not the case now.”
“So I mean, it’s just, mean, Stephen Miller never fails to live up to my expectations of incompetence.”
“Should he be fired?” pressed the media.
“I’m going to leave that up to the president,” replied Thillis. “I can tell you, if I were president, neither one of them would be in Washington right now. I think Noem needs to decide what… I mean, I think if Noem looks at her body of work, I could not be. If I were in her position, I can’t think of any point of pride over the last year. She’s got to make her own decision, or the president does, but she is taking this administration into the ground on an issue that we should own.”
“We should own the issue of border security and immigration, but they have destroyed that for Republicans. Something that got the president elected, they have destroyed it through their incompetence.”
Unusually sharp criticism from a Republican, but well-deserved.
They are the architects of the Trump administration’s relentless assault on our civil liberties, the breakdown of law and order, the undermining of our democracy and the Orwellian flood of lies justifying the unjustifiable — and now they have blood on their hands from the murder of US citizens.
Noem and Miller need to be fired and then held accountable for ICE’s outrageous, illegal, and inhumane rampage of violence and terror through American communities.
Graham pushes back on Tillis’ criticism of Noem, Miller for labeling man killed by Border Patrol a ‘terrorist’
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Tuesday defended Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller after Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., criticized the pair for labeling the U.S. citizen killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis as a “domestic terrorist.”
Tillis was the first Senate Republican to call for Noem to be fired after the killing of Alex Pretti, 37, who was shot by federal agents as he was recording immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis over the weekend.
“What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying. She should be out of a job,” Tillis told reporters earlier on Tuesday. “It’s just amateur-ish. It’s terrible. It’s making the president look bad on policy that he won on. [President Donald Trump] won on a strong message on immigration. Now, nobody’s talking about that. … They’re talking about the incompetence of the leader of Homeland Security.”
Noem and Miller “told the president before they even had an incident report whatsoever that the person who died was a terrorist. That is amateur hour at its worst,” Tillis added.
Senate Gop Critics Say Noem ‘Needs To Go’ Amid Fallout From Minneapolis Shootings
Responding to Tillis, Graham said someone “must have a very high opinion of themselves” if they believe they can get President Donald Trump to distance himself from Miller.
“I’ve known Stephen Miller for a very long time. We have our differences, but we have more in common. When the clock strikes midnight for President Trump, there will be very few by his side. One will be Stephen Miller. If you don’t get that, you’ve missed a lot. No one has helped Trump more than Stephen Miller,” Graham told Fox News’ Chad Pergram.
“To convince yourself that you can get Trump to distance himself from Stephen Miller, you must have a very high opinion of themselves,” he continued.
The South Carolina lawmaker added: “To my Republican colleagues, you need to understand that the President’s confidence in Stephen Miller has been rock solid and unshakable. And Miller is part of that group.”
Alex Pretti, 37, was shot and killed on Saturday by Border Patrol agents while recording federal immigration operations in Minneapolis. An ICU nurse, Pretti appeared to be attempting to attend to a woman agents knocked down when he was sprayed with an irritant, pushed to the ground and beaten. An agent was seen pulling Pretti’s lawfully owned gun from his waistband before other agents fired several shots and killed him.
Noem was quick to label Pretti a “domestic terrorist,” and Miller characterized him as things such as a “would-be assassin,” both of which are unsubstantiated claims that sparked bipartisan pushback.
The White House has sought to distance itself from the comments by Noem and Miller, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying she has “not heard the president characterize” Pretti that way.
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But despite calls from Democrat and Republican lawmakers to oust Noem over her response to Pretti’s killing, Trump expressed confidence in the secretary to continue leading DHS.
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“I think she’s doing a very good job. The border is totally secure. You know, you forget we had a border that I inherited where millions of people were coming through. Now we have a border where no one is coming through. They come into our country only legally,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.
Asked if he agreed with Noem and Miller labeling Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin,” the president said he had not heard those remarks.
“Well, I haven’t heard that. He shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” Trump said.
Trump also said the shooting was a “very sad situation” and he wants a “very honorable and honest investigation” that he wants to see for himself.
Original article source: Graham pushes back on Tillis’ criticism of Noem, Miller for labeling man killed by Border Patrol a ‘terrorist’View comments(12)
Trump battles Minneapolis shooting fallout as agents put on leave
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The Trump administration said Wednesday that two immigration agents involved in the fatal shooting of a civilian in Minneapolis had been placed on leave, as the president slammed the city’s mayor despite a promise to de-escalate the situation.
The officers have been on leave — a move US officials said was “standard protocol” — since Saturday, when Alex Pretti was shot multiple times after being forced to the ground by camouflaged officers in a scuffle captured on video.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit” in Minneapolis, the focal point for tensions over his hardline immigration crackdown.
Yet on Wednesday, the 79-year-old Republican attacked the mayor of Minneapolis, saying that his refusal to cooperate with federal authorities on rooting out suspected illegal immigrants was “a very serious violation of the law.”
Mayor Jacob Frey is “playing with fire,” Trump said on social media.
Saturday’s fatal shooting of Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was widely condemned across the political aisle despite initial efforts by White House officials to justify the killing.
In a bid to stem the backlash, Trump shuffled the leadership of immigration agents deployed in Minneapolis.
He replaced the confrontational Greg Bovino, famed for reveling in aggressive, televised immigration crackdowns, with the policy-focused “border czar” Tom Homan.
Another high-ranking official, Attorney General Pam Bondi, was in Minneapolis on Wednesday as she announced the arrests of 16 Minnesota “rioters” for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement.
