We stole Kristi Noem’s purse.
It was the easiest thing we’ve ever done. We didn’t need to pick a lock, outsmart a bodyguard, or disable a security system. We didn’t even need to wait for a distraction. The purse was just there — hanging off the back of her chair in a downtown D.C. restaurant like it belonged to someone who doesn’t understand risk, threat, or even basic purse etiquette. The Secretary of Homeland Security, dining in the nation’s capital with the equivalent of a mobile command center flopping around behind her like a clearance-rack accessory. She was mid-bite on a forkful of beet salad when we lifted it. Didn’t even blink.
That’s how easy it was to rob Kristi Noem — a woman whose job is literally to prevent America from being robbed.
And what did we find inside? Oh, dear reader. It was not a purse. It was a cry for help.
There was, of course, the cash — $3,000 in neatly folded bills, because apparently she thought Easter was a cash-only holiday and Christ tipped in twenties. There was her passport, unsecured, bent at the corners, smeared with what looked like bronzer. She’d probably been using it as a coaster at the hotel bar. The blank checks were real — not just blank in the literal sense, but metaphorical too, like the ones she writes for corruption, cruelty, and executive overreach.
There were receipts from stores you don’t admit to shopping at if you want people to think you’re folksy. $400 for a monogrammed firearm holster in teal snakeskin. $72 on scented hair oil with a name like “Freedom Whisper.” A $19 charge at a gift shop in Mar-a-Lago labeled simply: “Frame – CD.” We opened the frame. Inside was a photo of Cruella DeVille.
No joke. No exaggeration. A black-and-white headshot of the cartoon villain herself, with a little lipstick heart drawn in the corner.
There was no briefing folder, no notes, nothing that suggested she’d done a minute of work that day. But there were three different lipsticks, a compact mirror shaped like a horse, a wad of chewing gum wrapped in a receipt from an overpriced salad chain, and one rogue earring shaped like a crucifix. The kind of item you wear when you want to signal Jesus without having read him.
And beneath all that — the final insult — a laminated quote from Ronald Reagan that read: “Trust, but verify.” The irony hit harder than a Senate ethics report. She hadn’t verified a damn thing. She didn’t even notice we were watching. She didn’t notice we followed her. She didn’t notice when the purse left the chair. Because Kristi Noem is always so busy performing power, she forgot how to protect it.
We didn’t steal a purse. We exposed a cabinet secretary with all the judgment of a middle-school field trip chaperone who left the bus doors open. We ran an unintentional field exercise on the Department of Homeland Security, and the results came back stamped “unfit for duty.”
This is the same woman who once shot her own 14-month-old dog and published the story like it was supposed to make us admire her. She looked at a puppy and saw a problem. She looked at her constituents and saw props. She looked at Trump and saw salvation. That’s her moral compass — a dead dog, a dictator, and a dream of becoming America’s least competent martyr.
Let us also remember the swaying. Yes, the swaying. The most undignified moment in political history not involving a booking photo. She stood next to Donald Trump onstage while he made a captive audience listen to his favorite songs — not an anthem, not a speech, just a playlist. And Kristi stood there, gently rocking like a wind-up toy that had run out of batteries. No words. No substance. Just the rhythm of surrender. That’s who she is — not a leader, not a fighter, just a figurehead in fringe and hairspray, moving to someone else’s beat.
We didn’t steal Kristi Noem’s dignity. You can’t steal what never existed. We just held a mirror up to it — and then emptied the contents of her purse onto the floor of a nation that deserves better.
We’ll return the bag. Eventually. But the shame? That’s hers to carry now. Right over the shoulder, like the broken strap of a life lived in borrowed slogans and televised obedience.
Subscribe to Closer to the Edge. We don’t take handbags — we take hostages of hypocrisy.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.