DHS Secretary Kristi Noem testifies at Senate hearing

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, questioned Noem about the decision to spend millions of dollars on television advertisements that feature her.

“How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently?” Kennedy asked.

Noem said the president tasked her with telling people in the country illegally “that they needed to leave or we would detain them and remove them and they’d not get the chance to come back to America the right way.” She said that approach “has been extremely effective.”

Noem said she and the president had a conversation about her running the advertisements before she was sworn in and have talked about it since then. She said the service contracts went out to a competitive bid.

“And the people that you ended up picking were people who had formerly done your political work back in South Dakota, is that right?” Kennedy asked.

Noem replied, “no, that’s not correct, sir.” Kennedy said, “I think it is.”

The DHS secretary chimed in to say “how effective that communications has been,” to which Kennedy replied, “they were effective in your name recognition.”

“To me it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot,” Kennedy said. “It’s just hard for me to believe, knowing the president as I do, that you said, ‘Mr. President, here are some ads I cut and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that.”