Tomi Lahren Lights Into ‘Sideshow’ Kristi Noem’s $220,000,000 Ad Boondoggle, Compares It To ‘Learing Centers’
Fox News host Tomi Lahren blasted outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign two days after President Donald Trump announced his intention to replace her.
On Saturday’s episode of “The Big Weekend Show,” Lahren singled out the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) expensive 60-second commercial from late 2025, which notably featured a cowboy hat-clad Noem riding a horse while Mount Rushmore is visible in the background. She then compared the apparent misuse of taxpayer dollars in the nine-figure ad to the Minnesota fraud scandal.
“I don’t understand how you spend $220 million riding horses near Mount Rushmore,” Lahren said. “I’m from Rapid City, South Dakota. Mount Rushmore is the backdrop to where I grew up. I don’t know how you spend so much to do that.”
“We have to be very, very fair here. If we’re calling out the Minnesota Democrats for their fraud and their ‘learning centers,’ then you have to call it out on your side too,” the commenter pointed out, referring to the misspelled sign for a since-shuttered Somali-run Minneapolis daycare that is featured prominently in independent journalist Nick Shirley’s viral video about the fraud. (RELATED: CNN’s Harry Enten Says Americans Overwhelmingly Support Trump’s Decision to Remove Noem)
“And you have to say, ‘Hey, the math doesn’t hold up here. What was going on with that ad?’ You have become a spectacle. You have become the topic of conversation,” Lahren pointed out.
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“It’s not a good thing when immigration is so important to this president. So important to those who voted for President Trump. First and foremost, a lot of people voted based on immigration,” the Fox News host continued. Polls also showed that voters who viewed immigration as an important issue in the 2024 election cycle supported Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.
“So yes, the border is closed, thank God. [Border czar] Tom Homan did a fantastic job. We can give her flowers for what she’s done to contribute to this effort, but when you become the story and your antics outside of work become the story, then you lose the plot,” Lahren added, calling Trump’s decision Thursday to replace Noem with Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin pending Senate confirmation “fantastic.”
“Kristi had to go. And I’ll also say ‘Justice for Cricket,'” Lahren said at the end of her speech, referring to a 14-month-old puppy that Noem justified shooting in her 2024 book because she was “untrainable.”
Costing just under a quarter of a billion dollars, the taxpayer-funded one-minute DHS ad was priced roughly equivalent to the production budget of the 2021 superhero film “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
“Why do I love these wide open spaces? They remind me why our ancestors came here. Not just for its beauty but for the freedom that only America offers. My name is Kristi Noem,” the secretary on horseback says at the start of the commercial while a country guitar riff plays in the background. The one-minute video ends with on-screen text: “Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.”
🚨 NEW: @JoeConchaTV says most, if not ALL, Trump supporters believe FIRING Kristi Noem was the “right decision” because of her “sometimes irresponsible” media posts 🚨
He points out that unlike Trump 1.0, the first cabinet firing for the second term lasted more than a year.@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/QnXAWAKZb0
– Anthony Iafrate (@tonyiafratedc) March 7, 2026
The day before Trump announced Noem’s dismissal as DHS secretary, Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked her about the announcement during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
“How do you reconcile this concern about waste, which I share, with the fact that you spent $220 million to run TV ads that highlight you?” » the senator asked Noem. He then asked her if Trump had endorsed the campaign. She responded that the president was aware of this and called the ad “effective.”
“They were effective in your name recognition. To me, that puts the president in a terribly awkward situation…it’s just hard for me to believe, knowing the president that I know, that you said, ‘Mr. President, here are some ads that I cut, and I’m going to spend $220 million to make them work,’ that he would have agreed to that,” Kennedy replied.
Just before Lahren’s speech, Fox News contributor Joe Concha said on “The Big Weekend Show” that most, if not all, people who support Trump “seem to think ‘replacing Noem’ was the right decision.”
“Not because no one was doing a good job if you look at the numbers, for example in terms of border crossings and expulsions, but the fact that his messages with the media were uneven and sometimes irresponsible,” he added.
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