RINO Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) showed his true colors on Tuesday in a screaming rant in the House Judiciary Committee hearing to examine Kristi Noem’s leadership of the Department of Homeland Security.
Tillis went on an insane screaming session for ten straight minutes against Noem, accusing her of violating the law and threatening to stonewall Senate business over her leadership.
His rant included attacks on Trump’s pardoning of January 6 hostages, the Trump Administration’s handling of immigration enforcement operations, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding and responses, and Trump Administration officials, including Stephen Miller, who he accused of “aiding and abetting” in the arrests of American citizens during ICE operations.
After purporting to be the biggest defender of law enforcement and standing up for corrupt Capitol Police thugs who murdered Americans on January 6, he trashed ICE and Border Patrol agents and claimed they unjustly killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti and that they need “to learn from that.” He went on to justify leftists who are threatening and assaulting ICE agents and blamed Kristi Noem for enabling them to kill Americans.
Tillis actually said that the Trump Administration is trying to deport too many people!
He went on to attack Noem for FEMA, accusing her of “incompetent FEMA leadership” and “violating the law” by “restricting or diverting FEMA resources from the agency’s mission.”
To conclude his insane speech, Tillis called for Noem’s resignation, causing all of the Democrats to clap for him, and threatened to block the Senate from conducting business.
“I don’t want an applause, please don’t do that for me,” he said before threatening to hold the entire Senate hostage by denying quorum and putting a hold on en bloc nominations.
Tillis: I’m really glad that a lot of my Republican colleagues talked about the disaster that Biden and Mayorkas, your predecessor, created. It was absurd. You heard the things from Senator Britt. People that came over here, who themselves were traumatized by the very people who then come to this country and traumatize American citizens. You heard Senator Schmidt saying the same thing. A lot of us are very frustrated with the disaster that President Biden left behind and a failed DHS. It’s why I’m angry, and it’s why I’ve been critical of you, Secretary Noem because we’re missing an opportunity.
Ladies and gentlemen, one of the reasons President Trump won a year and a half ago is because people were sick and tired of a democratic administration’s open border policy and allowing millions of people to come to this country, 1.7 million called gotaways. We don’t even know where they are, but we know when you pay a premium to a cartel to get them into this country, they’re bad people.
Now, why have I been critical of Secretary Noem? Because I don’t think we’re focusing on— we have limited resources. ICE can’t be everywhere at once. There’s very few people in Capitol Hill that support law enforcement more than me, including the sworn ICE officers. In fact, I’ve just been told, fortunately, in about a week and a half, we’re going to get a plaque on the wall over the Capitol, thanking the Capitol Police officers and all the agencies have responded on January 6. All those thugs have actually been pardoned, and yet, we haven’t thanked the Capitol police officers for their work here. So, when I say I’m unapologetically pro-law enforcement, you can count every single sworn officer in homeland security.
So, why am I disappointed with Secretary Noem? Because we’re not going after enough people who did this damage at the expense of running numbers that Stephen Miller wants out of the White House. We just want numbers! We want 1000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day, because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality Matters, not quantity; Quality! and what we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Miss Noem, a disaster. What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American citizens. I could talk about the culture that’s been created here with Stephen Miller aiding and abetting.
I heard first reports that he was the one that said it was a domestic terrorist situation, where two people lost their lives in Minneapolis. I’ve heard that report. Maybe you can refute it. I don’t know that we’ll have time for you to respond because I’m giving you a performance evaluation here. I’m not looking for a response, and I’m saying, Ms Noem, that time after time after time, I’ve been disappointed. But before I get back to looking at the vicious people that did this damage to these families, I want to talk a minute about FEMA.
You have a policy right now that anything over $100,000 has to go through your desk for approval. I asked my staff, because I’m a management consultant, I don’t try to do cheap shots in here. But the facts do not lie. This is your administration for FEMA response. This is President Trump’s first administration. Which one would you like to have? If you’re a state that has a $60 billion disaster, your biggest disaster in South Dakota that I can tell— but when you were an elected official, was about a half a billion dollars. So 1/100 of this single storm, where 1000s of people are hurting in North Carolina and you’re just barely catching up. This is what competent FEMA leadership looks like. This is what incompetent FEMA leadership looks like.
And people are hurting in western North Carolina from the most significant storm they’ve ever experienced! This is what we need more of. I’m convinced you can’t do it. If you’re requesting a review of $100,000 and up then it begs the question: Why? Why would you be involved in that? Why would that be a policy? And in a minute, I’ll ask you about some people that are involved, some special government employees. Why are they involved in it?
Noem: Senator, that $100,000 only had to do–
Tillis: No, and you can finish until my 10 minutes are done, and I will hold the clock until I finish. The bottom line is, I’ve done the analysis, and you can say whatever you want to, I’ve worked with a Democrat governor, I’ve worked with a Republican governor, I’ve worked with fiscal research. We have people contacting my office now to get the information to better understand the failure of this department. You failed at FEMA, and in fact, if I get to it— actually, why don’t I cover this right now? The Homeland Security Act of 2002 expressly prohibits the Secretary of Homeland Security from restricting or diverting FEMA resources from the agency’s mission. Based on your disaster response in the chart that I just showed you, I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly. So, I’ll be asking and getting a submission to the record, submitting a question for the record, what the total amount of FEMA reimbursements are currently being held by DHS, awaiting for final approval! Held by DHS, awaiting for final approval for an agency that you should not be obstructing the disbursement on. I’m going to give you time to answer to it under penalty of perjury so that we can get it right.
Now, going back to Minneapolis, why can’t we just say we made a mistake? I will ask you one question, if you can just give me a quick response. Who does Tom Holman work for, you or the president?
Noem: The president.
Tillis: Okay. Why is that? Because I believe the President recognized that you weren’t getting it done in Minneapolis, and you’re putting us further away from pointing to this. We’re beginning to get the American people to think that deporting people is wrong. It’s the exact opposite. The way you’re going about deporting them is wrong. The fact that you can’t admit to a mistake, which looks like under investigation it’s going to prove that Miss Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back. Law enforcement needs to learn from that. You don’t protect them by not looking after the facts. Not only should the FBI be investigating it, but every single law enforcement agency in that jurisdiction should be invited to it. So, our law enforcement officers do not have this pall cast upon them.
One of the reasons why ICE officers are having threats, and damn the people that threaten ICE officers because so many of them are doing a good job, is because you’ve cast a pall on them by acting like we should investigate things differently. Officer-involved shootings have a formula that we should go through every time, and we’re not going through that formula. As a matter of fact, in Miss Good’s case, I think that they were even saying that maybe there wasn’t even a need to do it in the DOJ. I hope that that’s changed, but I’m telling you, it was a civil rights review. I saw your frown. You could, you can correct me if I’m wrong. But originally, Blanche said there wouldn’t be an investigation. Folks, law enforcement, we’ve got to have their back. We’ve got to make it clear when they make a mistake, then they get corrected for it, but you don’t walk away from it, and you’ve done it too many times
Now, Secretary, I read your book last week, and honestly, some of the parts of it impressed me, but some of it distresses me, and I’ll give you a good example of one that does: The passage where you talked about killing a dog that was 14 months old. I train dogs, all right? And you are a farmer. You should know better. You should know that if you’re going out to a hunting lodge, and you’re putting pheasants out, and you’re putting dogs out, you don’t take a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices! It’s in your book. We could play it if we had time. At that same lunch hour, you killed a goat, and you killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly. You are a farmer. You don’t castrate a goat if they behave badly. You should have probably done that before. But my point is those are bad decisions, made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis. I expect— we’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that in the time that I’ve seen you responding to the emergency in North Carolina and across the southeast and acknowledging when mistakes are made, and speaking too soon for the expedient of social media or whatever it is.
I’ll leave you with this, Miss Noem. I’m expecting answers to Charlotte’s Web. I requested it a month ago. That was one of the investigations, Charlotte, 20 minutes from where I live. All I asked for if it had to be anonymized, was information so that I could determine if your hit rate is right. I want to find more of those people, and I want to detain fewer of the others, and Mr. Pres— or Mr. Chair, in my remaining time, I have a lot to go, but I want to submit this letter from the Office of Inspector General that cites 10 different instances under ms Noem’s leadership where they’ve been misled and not allowed to pursue investigations that they think are critically important. Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly? That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation. And if I don’t get an answer to these questions— I don’t want an applause, please don’t do that for me— if I don’t get an answer to these questions, if I don’t get an answer that you’ve had a month to respond to and the remaining ones, as of today, I’ll be informing leadership that I’m putting a hold on any en bloc nominations until I get a response. And in two weeks, if I don’t get a response, I’m going to deny quorum and mark up in as many committees as I can until I get a response.
(@GuntherEagleman) 
