On Saturday Night Live, fired Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her goodbyes, turning in the traditional and not-so-traditional items required in her Trump administration role.
Noem (Ashley Padilla) was introduced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost), who said she had been “reassigned—under the bus.”
“I just want to make it clear that I didn’t get fired—I self-deported,” she said.
Trump let her go on Thursday, with one contributing factor reportedly being Noem testifying that the president had signed off on a $220 million DHS ad campaign in which she featured prominently.
“And though I may be leaving this job, I won’t be ending my mission,” she said. “As I’ve told my plastic surgeon, ‘The work is never done.’”
Noem added that she has no regrets about her tenure, despite one of several controversies being federal agents shooting and killing two Americans during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in January, after which she falsely smeared them as domestic terrorists.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth takes questions from the press about the current military operations in Iran pic.twitter.com/em77F74Zrk
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) March 8, 2026
“Like they say: you miss 100 percent of the dogs you don’t shoot,” she said, referring to how she once shot her puppy and claimed it was a lesson in good leadership.
“I think I really nailed it,” Noem added. “And my it, I mean my married coworker, in a big, beautiful flying bedroom 30,000 feet over Minneapolis.”
Leaving her role—along with rumoured lover Corey Lewandowski—is bittersweet, Noem continued. “But the time has come for me to turn in my badge, gun, lips, lashes, teeth and forehead.”
Noem then tried to be upbeat about her new job, Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas.
“I just saw my office in a WeWork space outside Denver,” she said, “and it is spectacular.”
From Rolling Stone US
