A former assistant homeland security secretary said Friday night that she expects more “chaos” to return to the United States’ national defense agency after President-Elect Donald Trump nominated Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) to be its next head.
Elizabeth Neumann, a prominent national security expert and homeland security official who has served across three presidential administrations, told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins that the chaos will be “definitely the same” as it was during Donald Trump’s first term.
“Chaos will be not managed as well,” she said, noting that while newly-minted chief of staff Susie Wiles runs a “tight ship,” only so much discipline can be brought to Trump’s “chaos-style.”
She noted that Trump enjoys igniting fights between his own people and making a policy decision that flies in the face of what experts have worked on for months.
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What is different, she said, is at least in the first term, credentialed subject-matter-experts were at the helm of these important departments. Those experts guided Trump to an informed decision, she said.
Not so, anymore.
“Now he’s hired people who like to go on Fox News and talk,” she said. “And they don’t care about governing. And they don’t have the experience.”
Neumann later added that this Cabinet probably knows Trump has no interest in being controlled this time around.
“The chaos trickles down to the Cabinet secretaries themselves and the way that they get to run their own agenda and even run their own daily calendars. It’s quite an experience,” she said. “And for those who didn’t experience it the first time, I think they’re in for a bit of a rude awakening.”
Neumann said she felt Noem was selected to be a “figurehead” who would frequently appear on TV to promote the MAGA agenda.
“Their primary focus is immigration and you can make a strong argument that the American people voted for that,” she said.
But that could become problematic, she said, because Homeland Security is charged with carrying out much more than just immigration enforcement, including cybersecurity, national disaster response and the Secret Service.
“It’s a little concerning for the agency itself that you have somebody coming in that really knows nothing about homeland security and hasn’t had that much experience actually — I know she’s the governor of a state but it’s a relatively small state — hasn’t been in office that long. So I’m a little concerned for the agency itself that they don’t have the kind of leader that they deserve,” said Neumann.
Watch the clip below or at this link.