Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Victor Davis Hanson Finds Himself ‘Baffled’ By Kristi Noem

Screenshot/YouTube/Victor Davis Hanson and The Daily Signal

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson said he was confused by outgoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem’s transformation during a Tuesday episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that Republican Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin would replace Noem after two hearings where lawmakers pressed her on DHS advertisements, two high-profile fatal Minnesota shootings and an alleged affair with her top aide, Corey Lewandowski. Hanson said on his Daily Signal show that Noem needed to return “to her original roots” after her issues leading the DHS.

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“I’m baffled by her because I had followed vaguely. I think she was a congressional representative before she became governor. And I saw a picture in 2015 or something with her husband,” Hanson said. “She had no makeup on. She had kind of a shag haircut, short haircut. Fresh face. They were very intimate. I don’t mean in the sexual sense, but, you know, close … She looked happy. She looked unaffected.”

“And to see her today with those long extensions and facial surgery — it’s sad. And she was a very effective governor,” he said. “So something happened, and that happened might be something connected with higher prominence, money — I don’t know what it was, attention — but she needs to get back to her original roots as a Dakotan and a family, you know, wife and kids,” he added.

Hanson highlighted several issues that he considered failures for Noem during her tenure as DHS secretary. The first was that she suggested the two Americans killed in DHS shootings were domestic terrorists.

Hanson argued that Noem should have not reached such a conclusion about the incidents without an investigation playing out. He also criticized Noem for not completing the southern border wall.

Moreover, he suggested that Noem played up her “personal femininity” and was “suggestive” when visiting El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center in March 2025.

“[T]hat hurt her,” Hanson said.

Furthermore, he underscored how Noem’s DHS allegedly awarded multiple no bid contracts for a $220 million advertising campaign to companies with personal connections to her and her senior advisers.

“And then we get into this: the reason that people liked her in the Dakota is she represented Dakota values. Maybe she still does, I hope she does, with family, husband, nuclear family, farm, ranching,” Hanson said. “But then, with Corey Lewandowski, she kind of morphed into an urban creature. And then there were these accusations that she was having an affair.”

“Somebody should have said to her, ‘Look, I know you want high-profile coverage. I know you want bombastic language, but that’s the president, not you. You’re his servant,'” he added. “‘So what you want to do is scale back the travel, wear plain clothes, or just wear workmanlike clothes that reflect what you’re doing. I wouldn’t try to wear a lot of makeup. I wouldn’t have any commercials in which you were in, and I would be very careful with the budget. And you’ve got to get rid of Cory Lewandowski.'”