00:02In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem faced sharp questioning on Capitol
00:08Hill Tuesday, starting her testimony by blaming Democrats for the ongoing funding fight over her
00:14department. Noem told the Senate Judiciary Committee the dispute over DHS funding is
00:19harmful to national security, arguing the department is being disrupted even as the
00:24administration touts what it calls major immigration enforcement gains. The latest
00:29Democrat-led shutdown of DHS is reckless, it's unnecessary, and it undermines the American
00:36national security, and it harms the men and women who work at DHS and their families. At a time when
00:42we've produced the most secure border in history and removed nearly three million illegal aliens from
00:47our country, disrupting the department responsible for those gains is indefensible.
00:53The most forceful criticism did not come from Democrats. Republican Senator Tom Tillis,
00:59who you see here, of North Carolina, delivered a blistering rebuke of Noem's leadership,
01:04accusing her department of detaining American citizens and saying immigration enforcement
01:09under her watch has been, in his words, a disaster. Watch.
01:14We just want numbers. We want a thousand a day, six thousand a day, nine thousand a day,
01:19because numbers matter, right? No, they don't matter. Quality matters, not quantity, quality.
01:25And what we've seen is a disaster. Under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster. What we've seen
01:33is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American citizens. I could talk about the culture
01:39that's been created here with Stephen Miller aiding and abetting.
01:44In one of the most striking moments of the hearing, the Republican Senator turned to a controversial
01:49story from Noem's memoir, where she described killing her 14-month-old dog after calling it
01:55untrainable. Tillis used Noem's own story to question her judgment.
02:00I train dogs, all right? And you are a farmer. You should know better. You should know that if you're
02:06going out to a hunting lodge and you're putting pheasants out and you're putting dogs out, you don't take
02:11a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill
02:17that
02:18dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training. And then you have the audacity
02:22to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices.
02:27The tense exchange underscores growing frustration with Noem's leadership,
02:32including from some members of her own party, as you saw, as Congress continues to scrutinize
02:37immigration enforcement and the Minneapolis shootings that left two Americans dead.
02:41The End
02:43You
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