Kristi Noem is out of a job, and Charlie Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, says that the former DHS secretary “should never have been nominated” in the first place.

“There is a paradox at the heart of this administration and the movement that sustains it,” says Charlie. “On the one hand, they claim that we’re on Flight 93 and that if the various problems that the United States faces are not fixed . . . the country is over. And on the other hand, they are repeatedly determined in the second term to put clowns in charge of administration of those issues.”

Noem’s nomination “is and was a mistake. And we can see this because we know what it looks like within the same administration, within the same term, when Trump picks somebody good.” Charlie points to the actions of Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent as prime examples of competent administration officials, and says, “These are serious people. One doesn’t have to agree with them on everything or like the administration to admit that they are serious people.”

“That Trump ever chose Kristi Noem to be in charge of border policy, the single most salient issue on which he has run and won since 2015, is bizarre.”

The president, Charlie contends, is “the political force in the executive branch. . . . He’s the one who is elected. He’s the one who makes policy subject to legislative limits. Those under him are supposed to be sort of permanent secretaries who interpret his will and put it into action.”

“Until we restore that, we’re not going to get the Congress we deserve . . . we’re also not going to get the executive branch we deserve, and we’re going to end up with more Kristi Noems who screw up an extremely important issue and embarrass the president in the process.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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