LEMON DROP | Donald Trump DUMPS Kristi Noem!

Welcome to Sunday. Sunday is when we sort of sit back and take a look and just sort of take stock of the whole week and then look ahead at what's to happen, what's possibly to come in the next week. I don't know how much more we can take because we're still not done with what happened this week. And the the the headlines just kept unfolding. Christy Gnome was fired after two very contentious uh hearings, one from the Senate, one from the Congress. Her relationship allegedly with a staffer who has also now been fired was in question, meaning the relationship, were they sleeping together? One congresswoman asked directly and she didn't deny it and perhaps that's why she went down. I should say why she was fired. Let's get into it. Y'all know why I'm laughing, right? I feel like I'm in church. I feel like I want to go to church right now. Um because cricket has finally gotten some justice. Yes, Yolanda. Yes, you are right. Bye-bye, Barbie. So, we are going to start with this breaking news that came over and how appropriate that it happened on Fox. Roll it, Andy. >> We do indeed have some breaking news. And this comes a day after a difficult couple of days on Capitol Hill in both the House and the Senate for Christine Gnome, the Homeland Security Secretary. She is being replaced. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen is now going to take over her job. The president making the announcement on Truth Social just a short time ago. He writes, quote, I am pleased to announce that the highly respected United States senator from the great state state of Oklahoma, Mark Wayne Mullum, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security effective March 31st of this month of this year. The current secretary, Christine Nom, who served as well and has had numerous and spectacular results, especially on the border, will be moving to be special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which is a new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere that they're announcing on Saturday at Dural in Florida. President says, "I thank Christy for her service at homeland." Uh so this comes amid uh reports that the president was none too pleased about the advertising campaign money that came to light during these hearings Sandra and uh so just in the last 24 hours we've heard a lot of rumors that Mark Wayne Mullen may be tapped to for DHS and now it appears the president has made that decision and that's going to happen the end of the month. >> So Christine Gnome was fired. What are y'all having for dinner tonight? >> I work every day to get factual information to the American people. On that day, you didn't on the day that Alex Prey was shot and you certainly didn't on the day Renee Good was shot. You weren't getting out good information. You were making a spurious claim that that has caused endless injury to the victim's families on the basis of of god knows what. and then your agency doesn't allow local investigators. They they essentially push away independent investigators. How is the public to have any confidence in investigations done of excessive use by ICE agents if number one, you make immediate and false statements about the victims? And number two, you don't let any independent agency conduct an investigation. How is the public supposed to believe anything your agency says or finds? >> Let's answer that question then. Why didn't he they just stop Israel? >> Yeah, I honestly don't know. I mean, you know what's weird is that like Trump has shown an ability to to reign in Netanyahu in the past. In fact, like more than his predecessor certainly. Um he actually stopped uh uh Trump from formally annexing the West Bank in 2020 because it would have jeopardized the Abraham Accords. Um you know he got to a you know an ostensible ceasefire in Gaza that Biden couldn't um it it >> so we got him to stop bombing in Syria. >> Yeah, exactly. He he has shown an ability to stand up to Netanyahu and you know obviously he's been you know nominally against uh these messy wars in the Middle East for for a long time now. So I honestly don't know why he he didn't just put his foot down this >> attack conservative women and you say that we're either stupid [ __ ] >> All right. So listen >> that's what you do. I'll pause. The only reason I said that is now she's playing the victim. She's playing the victim. She's not a victim. The real victim is what? Renee Nicole Good. The real victim is Alex Prey. The real victims are the people, American citizens, who have been gathered up off the street and beaten up and detained for no reason just because either they have an accent or they look like they're Hispanic or even they don't care. They're they're picking up black people. They killed two white people. They killed a black man as well around the same time except it wasn't caught on tape. So now she's pretending that she's a victim. She's supposed to be the party that calls everybody else snowflakes. And I'm not a victim. I can handle anything. But she can't handle the heat that's coming from this congressional kitchen right now. Nor could she handle the heat coming from the senatorial kitchen. And nor can she handle the heat of this job. And if you American people stand up to her, she cannot and will not stand be able to handle the heat coming from the American people because she should be fired. she should be impeached or she should step down because she's awful, awful, awful. And she's responsible for all of this [ __ ] that's happening on the streets and all of the people who have been killed, hurt, maimed, charged, all of it. She's responsible for it, as well as as well as our attorney general and everyone below her. And their day is coming. I told y'all every dog has its day and sometimes too. Keep going. So the question is and then what happens because I I I guess Democrats have backed themselves into a corner. I guess some of them but um I haven't heard many who support the actual support the mission but they are happy Olivia about the outcome. Uh, as Jasper has said, unless Jasper, unless you want to follow up here, but I haven't seen many Democrats, and then there are some, I'm sure, Jasper's right, who and I think many people I think obviously there are Iranians uh and Iranian-Americans who are happy about the Uyah uh being gone, but the the question was why now? Why now? What is it? And it leads me to believe that, you know, the Epstein, I hate to be conspiratorial, but the Epstein story would not go away. And here we are, and this is the headline, wallto-wall coverage. >> Well, I've been talking to other national security officials in my circle and trying to figure out that exact same thing. What drove this to happen exactly in this moment? And, you know, there's been reporting. We know that US intelligence did not quite support what Trump has been saying. publicly on the reasoning for it and that reasoning as the others have discussed has changed along the way. It has evolved and you know if for the Democrats on the Hill like what I would be hammering and asking about is okay so now you've taken this action let's talk about the aftermath and what that means for the long-term security of the American people right now in the homeland and both abroad. Um, Aiden, I mean, the bar is in hell. The bar is low. >> But, well, one, >> sorry, feature of this is how easily Trump could be a popular president. If he had cleaned up the border and moved on to the economy, I think his approval rating would be at 55% right now, but he's incapable of not indulging in his more extreme tendencies. And that's why his approval rating is hovering in the low 30s. >> There are others in the Middle East who have nuclear weapons. Now, I'm not saying Iran should have one, but I'm sure Iran is saying, "Why can't we?" Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. It's horrible. It's great that the Ayatollah is gone. I, you know, hate to say that about anyone's death, but uh it was horrible. Killed people and and had a a target right on Israel. All of that is true, but that doesn't mean that there is a justification for this war to have happened. Now, you can feel you can walk and chew gum at the same time. There is nuance. People think you have to be all the way in or all the way out. you can feel like, "I'm glad this dude is dead, but why the [ __ ] did you do it this right now? Why didn't you seek approval from Congress? Why didn't you go through the the the channels and all the levers that you're supposed to go through?" And all of the people who are making excuses for this [ __ ] right now. There's a reason that you're doing it. And it's not because that you are principled on some sort of um we need to be free uh from war and we need peace and um this is the peacetime president and and it's not a we're tired of the wararmongers. That's all [ __ ] You're lying. You're going along with it because you like the [ __ ] You like the racism. You like the misogyny and you maybe like the money that you're making or you're losing all your money. You can barely pay for your groceries, but you did it because you thought that he cared for you and he doesn't. But you do like the racism. You do like the white supremacy of it. Donald Trump is a bigot. Donald Trump is a racist and most of the people around him in his cabinet are as well. >> We've done enough for Israel. We're we're allies with Israel. We've done a lot for Israel. I I'm firmly in the camp of we don't need to do this, Joe. And by the way, we already we already did this. We already shook out their nuclear facilities or so we were told by the president and his team. I'd like to take them at their word. >> So this is a they believe it's a betrayal of the MAGA base. That's what Roan is saying. Nick Fuentes is saying this is a war of aggression for Israel. He's also saying uh Trump betrayed MAGA. He has lost his mandate to govern Mr. Caputo. >> Okay. I I can stay for a little while longer just in case you need me to elaborate on anything. Uh just so this is there's going to be a long answer and I apologize for it. Don't underestimate. >> You have to go. Sam, if you got to go. Go ahead. I'll hear this Mark and then I got to go around dinner. >> No. Uh, don't underestimate how Donald Trump is viewing this. Now, I'm not saying he's right. But in Donald Trump's eyes, he's winning. This is great. and in the the White House and um and the Trump political operation as distinguished from say the NRCC, you know, the the guys who are in charge of electing congressmen for the Republicans and the senators for Republicans. In the Trump political operation, this is not a bad thing is that he has the opportunity to sort of remake the Middle East. he has the opportunity to take out a brutal regime and they view Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and Steve Bannon and well Fuentes is a slightly different one but they lump them in the same as being sort of loud malcontents who are out of step with the base. They do have polling that suggests suggests it may be true like something on the order of what 85 90% of Republicans are supportive of Donald Trump. I haven't seen polling on these strikes yet. That's going to change depending on the casualties. Generally, in the immediate aftermath of something, especially with the killing of the Ayatollah, I'm I suspect that the polling from their perspective is pretty good in their base. So that's not as much of a concern to them as others in the Republican party have because the Republican party since the Civil War has been closely associated with the military and though you know we've heard these things about no foreign wars and no foreign invent you know interventions >> Trump has shown little concern and worry about lobbing bombs and missiles into lots of places. In fact, a colleague of mine at Axio wrote this morning about how compared to other presidents, he has bombed more different countries than any other in recent modern times. >> So, the Republican base outside of these elite podcast hosts and the like is supportive of this. It some of their blood quickens, their hearts go pitterpatter. The Ayatollah is dead. So, for now, for now, we'll see how this plays out. The Trump operation likes where it is and likes what it sees. Let's reconvene this in three weeks. If things are the same or if they're different, I'll have a different take. >> You could pick a random group of people off the street tonight here in Washington DC. Just a random group. And they could probably do a better job than our government is doing right now with this. They don't have a goal. There's no strategic plan. There's no timeline. And what this is likely to lead to is again a long war with a lot of dead Americans and no rationale for how this is helping the American people. The last time we did something like this, Steve, I think he's right. The last time we did something like this, it took us 20 years to get out of it. Well, yes, but this is even worse than that because when that happened, the Iraqi regime was deposed in about a 100 hours of fighting. And in this instance, we're past the 100 hour mark with an air campaign that has no end in sight and has no objective attached to changing the regime in Iran, which won't be able to be accomplished without the proverbial boots on the ground. So the fundamental question is what happens next? What what happens next? And there's no there's no plan. And so when you when you look at the totality of this, Iran is a country that's larger than Alaska. It's two and a half times the size of Texas, has 90 million people. It's a mountainous country. And that country is not something that is going to be taken over by words from the podium by Pete Hegsath after bombs get dropped on installations in the country. And so what we what we've tried to do is to say that we're going to change the regime, right? We did achieve that in Iraq and what comes after is 20 years of disaster and mission creep and a change and so on and so forth and the weapons not there. In this instance though, we have said we're going to change a regime with no plan to accomplish the changing of the regime. So we will lose this war against Iran if the Mullers remain in power. And there's no plan to dislodge the Mullers from power, but dropping bombs and never in history has dropping bombs dislodged a regime from power ever. >> Ma'am, I did not call him a domestic terrorist. I said it appeared to be an incident of >> when you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence. That is the definition of domestic terrorism. This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That's the facts. >> How can you pretend otherwise? How does this woman sleep at night? How does this woman look in the mirror? She probably looks in the mirror and she doesn't recognize herself obviously because she has an entirely new face in the last couple years. But I mean, how does she do that? And how do most of these people who are in if not all of them who are in this administration, how do they sleep at night? I don't understand how they do it. And I don't understand why the American people are going along with it. Well, the American people are not going along with it at least. But I think the American people feel like they're stuck and they don't have agency when they when you really do have agency. But my question is, why are lawmakers going along with this? Why are they going along with this? Representative Jones, as you watched last night and um as you have been watching since even before last night, there were questions about voter suppression and I want to know how you feel about that. What do you think happened in this race? Not not who should have won or any of that, but what happened as it relates to just the race in general? So, you understand that I'm in Houston and they alleged that the suppression happened in Dallas. >> So, I've talked to people in Dallas and they told me what happened, but I'm going to talk about what I know in Houston. And what I know in Houston, there was no voter suppression in Houston. Uh what I know in Houston, for anybody who follows campaigns, I saw some glaring things that weren't done prior to election day that serious campaigns do prior to election day and glaring things that are normally done in successful campaigns on election day that were not done. Specifically, I didn't receive one door knock from anyone on uh Congressman Caucus campaign. Not one. I'm a I'm a super voter. I never miss an election. We are the people that people contact if they have any money at all to try to persuade us to vote for them, right? Um I didn't receive one piece of mail. Um again, we normally get mail. Don't know why that didn't happen. U the only time I saw Congresswoman Crockett was when I watched Beyond the Gates, uh which is a black soap opera, and she would have one commercial. Um, so that's one thing I was just trying to figure out. There's no infrastructure. There were no robo dials, no calls. Um, black people, black people in the political space because there's a whole economy there were complaining that no one was reached out to because black media and and we know black people. On election day, I worked Acres Homes, which is one of the highest voting black polls in Houston. I worked Wheeler, one of the highest voting black polls in Houston on yesterday. I didn't see I saw one Jasmine yard sign in a sea of signs. Not one person was pushing her card at Acres Holmes, which is where Congressman Sylvester Turner is from. Everybody's heard about the FO at Wheeler, which is where Dr. King went, where Reverend Lawson had that church, which is a super high black voting poll. I saw three Jasmine signs. I saw eight Taller Rico signs and I saw nobody uh pushing for Jasmine Crockett. And so what I'll say is this. In very difficult campaigns, you have got to lean into your base. That's what you that's who you've got to get to come out to vote for you. And so I just didn't see where black people were touched by a campaign. The thing for me is is that and this is where it really gets uncomfortable because this is the same president who told us that he was the president of peace. He's the same president who said that he would end the endless wars. The same president who said that other administrations were reckless in all of this and that they wasted American lives overseas. That's what he said to us. Um and he didn't just say that. He accused Barack Obama. I don't know if we have that sound by Andy. if we do, we could find it of potentially starting a war with Iran to boost his poll numbers. He also tweeted that a while ago and now he's doing exactly what he says. Um, exactly what he's accusing others of. And that is the authoritarian that's their playbook is to accuse other people of doing exactly what they do. So he said that he put that idea into the ethos into the minds of Americans the bloodstream of American politics. So when we are sitting here in the middle of an escalation here in the United States while you at the same time another story was heating up people are going to connect the dots. Olivia Troy talked about the wag the dog aspect of this. the Epstein files, right? In the background. The Epstein files in the background. So, let's be honest, NPR and other outlets reported that certain materials in the EP Epstein documents uh release were withheld from the public from a public database. There were questions about transparency. There were questions about missing interview summaries, questions about what was included and what wasn't. That story was not only in the headlines, it was gaining traction. wasn't just this isn't just conspiracy. This wasn't just chatter. This was a mainstream reporting asking very serious transparency questions. And then suddenly the news cycle shifts. Missiles, defense briefings, retaliation, escalation. Now I'm not saying that someone sat down and said, "Let's distract the public." I mean, you know, but what I am saying is this president is the one who argued wars can be used that way. Look, um the reason that I'm laughing is because I tell you guys every day that this administration will lie to and you know on their mama and so they have been lying about the economy since Donald Trump took office. And it's, look, I'm not saying that that's not Trump derangement syndrome. This is, can we put up this is Peter Baker from the New York Times. Andy, put this up. Peter Baker tweeted on Trump versus Biden's jobs. The numbers don't lie. In the 13 months since Trump took office, the economy has created a net total of 198,000 jobs compared, okay, are you ready for this? To 1.4 4 million created in the last 13 months of the Biden administration now. Do I need even need to say anything? 198,000. Let's just give him 200. We'll just give him that. 200,000 versus 1.4 4 million in the same amount of time. But yet you say that Joe Biden's economy and his jobs records terrible. He was the worst. Joe Biden didn't know what he was doing. He was cognitive declined. And then when people say, well, you know, if you look at the actual numbers and if you look at if you investigate and you do com compare and contrast and analysis, the the the the metrics of the economy under Joe Biden were phenomenally better than Donald Trump. And it doesn't take an economic ex an economic expert or genius to figure that out. All you have to do is just look at the numbers to add 1 + 1. You don't need to be a genius in order to do that. You don't have to be a mathematician to know that it's two. You don't have to be um a uh a road scholar to understand that 1.4 million versus 198,000 or as I said, give them 200,000 that those two are not comparable at all. I do not take glee in anyone's demise except for Christine and some others that I will when it happens because let me tell you why I don't why I don't feel bad about this because um you know I yes I believe in turning the other cheek and forgiveness all those things in time but I'm also petty I'm also petty McPetty because Christy Gnome has ruined lives and she's respons responsible for ruining lives and not and not just ruining lives. She's responsible for taking lives. People lost their lives under her supervision and her lead her I shouldn't say leadership under her failures at the Department of Homeland Security. People lost their lives. Keith Porter, Renee Nicole Good, Alex Prey, and others. And let's not forget the people who were shot, the people who were dragged out of their homes in their underwear, the people who um were dragged to across the snow in the freezing cold. The people who were their cars were rammed. The people whose homes were broken into with battering rams with they did not have a judicial warrant. They said, "We have an administrative warrant. That's enough." The people who ended up going to countries that they had no idea where they were, even if they had done nothing wrong. The people who uh were not the violent criminals who they promised to take off of to to deport or detain. The people who were none of those, the people who did not get due process. And for all of that, I say good. [ __ ] you, Christine Gnome. That was a week that was. So now what? Fasten your seat belts because I think the more of this Epstein stuff that comes out, the more Donald Trump's polling poll numbers plummet, the more his appointees continue to embarrass him, the worse it is going to get. doesn't have an excuse, a viable excuse, a real excuse or rationale for this war. And now here we are and the midterms are right around the corner. So everybody buckle up. We're going to start a new week and I'll see you on Monday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time on the Don Lemon Show and the Don Lemon channel live for hot topics. Let us know what you think in the comments. Thanks so much for watching everybody. Your support means the world to us. Don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe so you never miss a show. We're live every weekday at 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p. p.m. Eastern time with new clips dropping at 2 p and 8p p.m. And if you want even more Don Lemon Show content, join the Lemon community. 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This Sunday, Don takes a step back to look at quite a chaotic week. How much more of this can we take? In just a few days, the country was hit with massive developments: escalating tensions and conflict involving Iran, disturbing new allegations tied to Jeffrey Epstein that mention Donald Trump, and political upheaval in Washington after the firing of Kristi Noem and the expected departure of Trump ally Corey Lewandowski. Don connects the dots between the week’s biggest stories, reflects on what they reveal about the state of the country, and looks ahead to what the next week could bring. With global conflict, political scandals, and questions about accountability dominating the headlines, the stakes keep getting higher. WE HAVE MERCH!! Purchase here: https://don-lemon-merch-store.myshopi... WATCH & Subscribe on YouTube @TheDonLemonShow! Become a member of our channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXs0... Follow Don on Substack! Listen on Apple, Spotify and iHeart Radio!