CBS News still exists, despite a president doing all he can to turn it into his own Baghdad Betty. Journalists are still demanding answers from this administration, even while the Baghdadest Betty of all — Bari Weiss — does everything she can to strip mine the long-running news agency for abusable parts. (That refers to you, Tony Dokoupil.)

Last Sunday morning, Margaret Brennan interviewed DHS head Kristi Noem on “Face the Nation.” Brennan did everything she could to push back against Noem’s false claims and bullshit assertions, but in the end, Noem clearly knew she’d always have the upper hand, thanks to Trump’s legal threats and Bari Weiss’s willingness to bury reporting that doesn’t please Trump.

As ICE continues to detain, arrest, or kill anyone that seems to be too dark or too loud in Minnesota, Brennan asked if there’s an actual end point for yet another federal “surge” targeting a “blue” state. Noem, of course, can’t provide a straight answer despite being given straight facts by the interviewer.

MARGARET BRENNAN: According to Pew, Minnesota’s population of immigrants here illegally stands at 2.2%. So, how do you judge when you’ve gotten everyone off the streets, that you say is, you know, requiring your federal agents be there? How do you say we’ve had mission accomplished?

SEC. NOEM: Well, we won’t stop until we are sure that all the dangerous people are picked up, brought to justice and then deported back to their home countries–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –You don’t have a number or a date?– 

SEC. NOEM: –We wouldn’t be in this situation- We wouldn’t be in this situation if Joe Biden hadn’t allowed our open-border policies to be in place and allowed up to 20 million people unvetted into this country. We have no idea how many dangerous people are here. 

That’s not an answer. Most of what fell out of Noem’s mouth during this interview wasn’t a direct answer. Instead, it was a bunch of Trump-esque rambling, randomly punctuated by Noem insisting the person interviewing her was lying.

Noem insisted that the “millions” (most of which obviously do not reside in Minnesota) being swept up by ICE were violent criminals. She claimed “70% of them have committed or have charges against them on violent crimes.” Brennan pushed back, citing stats released by the DHS itself:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, well, our reporting is that 47% based on your agency’s own numbers, 47% have criminal convictions against them*. But let’s talk about the other numbers–

SEC. NOEM: –Which means you’re wrong again. Absolutely. We’ll get you the correct numbers–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –Okay–

SEC. NOEM: –so you can use them in the future.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that’s from your agency. 

Noem is fully cooked. She’s indistinguishable from Trump or anyone else in his close orbit. When your lies are exposed by facts, you call the person with the actual facts a liar. But this willful disregard for truth is nothing new: this administration divorced itself from reality during Trump’s first term. In its second term, it’s pretending truth is whatever it says it is.

But it gets scarier, stupider, and weirder from there. Here’s Noem defending murdering citizens on the street before veering off into an extremely Trumpian interpretation of First Amendment rights:

SEC. NOEM: We’ve seen over 100 different vehicle weaponized and attacking law enforcement officers. I would hope that Mayor Frey, when he’s on here, that he’ll announce that he’s going to start working with us to bring safety to the streets. If he would set up a peaceful protest zone so that these individuals can exercise their First Amendment rights and do so peacefully, we would love that, because then we could work together to make sure we’re getting criminals to justice and letting people still express their First Amendment rights.

While the government does have extremely limited powers to enact time-and-place restrictions on First Amendment activity, it certainly does not have the power to force any locale to restrict protests to only the places the government will allow protesters to gather. That’s the exact opposite of the First Amendment, which is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect a Trump administration figure to pitch, even if it would never impose restrictions like these on anyone protesting in support of Trump and his policies. (See also: hundreds of pardoned people who engaged in literal insurrection in 2021.)

After bitching Brennan out for repeating the name of the officer (Jonathan Ross) who killed Renee Good (apparently it’s “doxxing” to use a published name during a national news interview [massive eye roll]), Noem goes on to claim (without facts in evidence) that ICE officers are dealing with threats up to (and including) frozen water:

SEC. NOEM: –Don’t say his name. I mean, for heaven’s sakes, we- we don’t- we shouldn’t have people continue to dox law enforcement when they have an 8,000%–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –his name is public–

SEC. NOEM: –increase in death threats against them–

MARGARET BRENNAN: — he was struck and hospitalized–

SEC. NOEM: –I know, but that doesn’t mean it should continue to be said. His life- he got attacked with a car that was trying to take his life, and then people have attacked him and his family, and they are in jeopardy. And we have law enforcement officers every day who are getting death threats and getting attacked at their hotels and they are–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –Well, can you tell me about his status right now–

SEC. NOEM: –getting ice thrown at them. 

I can’t imagine why people might be throwing ice at ICE, but I’m sure someone much smarter than me will make that connection. And I may be just a humble small town writer who writes like your average George Bailey, but I have to imagine this might have gone better for Noem if she had decided to end that answer one sentence earlier.

This would all be laughably surreal if this administration didn’t have so much power and the will to abuse it. It’s still surreal, but you have to embrace the blackest of comedy to croak out a laugh.

This administration only knows two moves: bluster and gaslighting. Whatever you saw, you didn’t see. Whatever violations the government committed never happened. Whatever can be disputed by facts is just the ravings of leftist liars and mainstream media losers. As for everyone caught in this crossfire, fuck ’em. This party only serves itself. If there’s any silver lining here at all, it’s that Noem is too busy being Trump’s Bigot Barbie to kill her children’s pets any time soon.