A newly released book reveals some of President Donald Trump’s most controversial decisions and why he chose specific paths in the White House.
When Trump announced that he had nominated then-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) to lead the Department of Homeland Security, multiple top figures in the MAGA movement were outraged.
Most notably, podcaster and Trump insider Steve Bannon was not too fond of Noem’s nomination.
Bannon rigorously attacked Noem for being unqualified to lead DHS.
“We still got the global war on terror. She runs the whole thing? She runs the f*cking Secret Service? It’s all of it. It’s the global war on terror,” Bannon told Jonathan Karl, who wrote the upcoming book “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.”
“It’s all that. What are you talking about? She’s never been in law enforcement!” he added.
Karl’s book claims that 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski repeatedly asked the president to choose Noem as DHS secretary.
Rumors have circulated in the past months claiming that Lewandowski and Noem were involved in a romantic relationship.
The ex-Trump campaign manager currently serves as Noem’s de facto chief of staff at DHS.
According to Karl’s book, Lewandowski only had one request for the president: choose Noem.
Considering that Noem was not initially on Trump’s transition team, officials in the 2024 campaign approached the president to ask why he had selected Noem to run DHS, as the Daily Mail reported.
“When a surprised Trump adviser asked the president-elect why he had decided to nominate Noem to be secretary of Homeland Security, he had a simple answer,” Karl’s book states.
In response, Lewandowski said, “I did it for Corey.”
“It’s the only thing Corey asked me for,” the president said, according to the book.
Bannon tore into Lewandowski for requesting Noem to lead DHS and said such a nomination was “dangerous.”
“This motherf**ker asked for somebody who’s obviously unqualified – and it’s dangerous. This is dangerous. What are you doing?” he said.
In 2023, bombshell claims suggested that Noem and Lewandowski were having an affair with one another. Both were married at the time and still are as of this writing.
Sources told the New York Post at the time that Noem and Lewandowski’s relationship was “so absurdly blatant and public.”
“It wasn’t like 2 a.m.,” the source told The Post. “It isn’t like we caught them at some dive bar miles away. It’s a lobby bar where everyone is staying and so there’s a bajillion political operatives and journalists and electeds around. I remember I saw it with my own eyes and a couple other people saw it and the blatantness was absurd.”
On Jan. 25, the U.S. Senate confirmed Noem to lead DHS in a 59-34 vote. Among those voting in the affirmative were seven Democrats.
