
Secretary of the Departmeny Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem fired a pilot over a blanket but then immediately regretted her decision when she needed the pilot to fly her home, so she reinstated them.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Noem has been flying around the country in a luxury 737 MAX jet with a private cabin in the back and rumored affair partner Corey Lewandowski (both Noem and Lewandowski are married to other people). DHS is leasing the jet and is trying to buy it for $70 million.
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The Journal reports that Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate staffers and question their loyalty, even giving them lie detector tests.
In one incident, Noem and Lewandowski were forced to switch to a different plane because of a maintenance issue. When they got to the second plane, they saw that Noem’s blanket hadn’t followed them over, so Noem and Lewandowski fired their U.S. Coast Guard pilot.
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“The Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination,” the Journal reported. “They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home.”
DHS is not commenting on the matter and just vaguely said that Noem “made personnel decisions to deliver excellence.” Noem denies having an affair with Lewandowski.
During the Biden administration, Republicans spent years raging at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for supposedly flying around the country in a “private jet,” even though they were referring to FAA aircraft, which are publicly owned and therefore are the opposite of “private.” In reality, Buttigieg usually flew commercial.
Fox News even once showed a picture of him in a small economy-class seat on a commercial flight as the Fox host scolded him for sleeping instead of working.
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