Greetings and welcome to this 76th edition of the Carnival of Fools! It’s my favorite sort of week, one where I get to piggyback off the efforts of smarter, more hardworking journalists than myself. (I tried cosplaying as a reporter once, back during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It gave me a newfound respect for the sorts of miseries these people regularly have to subject themselves to.) We don’t have to dwell too long on any one issue today, because the real stories were already written for me by serious people. So get your splash guard secured, kick back, and let a broken sewer pipe’s worth of Washington filth wash all over you: It’s time for another glorious morning wade through the muck.
The Calls Are Now Coming from Inside the White House for Kristi Noem
Long-time readers are by now well familiar with my negative opinion of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, which probably solidified back in April of 2024 — somewhere around the time I suggested seeking a warrant to search her backyard as an illegally unregistered pet cemetery. My take on her abilities as a political memoirist having thus been set quite firmly, I was never enthusiastic about the idea of her becoming secretary of homeland security anyway. Why give a key domestic portfolio to the lightweight governor of a small and noncompetitive Plains state?
I had my own theory — Donald Trump’s TV-addled lizard brain requires his administration be represented by his idea of “glamorous dames” whenever possible — but that was irrelevant. (His pick, not mine.) Two years later, however, in the wake of her performance after the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, my view now is that Noem should be launched in a SpaceX rocket into the heart of the sun. You might therefore justifiably regard me as a biased commentator.
But with the publication of last week’s enormous Wall Street Journal investigative piece on Noem’s tenure as DHS secretary, I’d like to claim at least a bit of vindication. “A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS,” reads the headline, and it is quite the intentional undersell.
For the record, the Journal
- describes Noem as addicted to headlines and completely out of her depth when it comes to immigration enforcement and homeland security issues — but then, you knew that already.
- strongly hints that Noem is conducting a long-term affair with ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who is also depicted as her thinly veiled Svengali and inner-circle patron in Trump World. (Both are married to other people; the Journal reports that their own attachment dates as far back as 2019, which means I’m holding him personally responsible for greenlighting the publication of the “Cricket” anecdote.)
- reports that Noem’s primary enemy within the administration is Tom Homan, whom she regards as more competent and experienced than her — and thus, a mortal threat to her reputation with Donald Trump.
- alleges that Lewandowski has abused his 130-day, time-limited role as a “special government employee” — he’s unconfirmable by the Senate, for transparent reasons — beyond all elasticity of law.
- claims that Lewandowski and Noem are responsible for massive mismanagement of funding at the Department of Homeland Security, holding up disbursements of cash for projects like the border wall, among other things, in a tangle of self-imposed red tape. The reason? Lewandowski wants to personally oversee and approve all money.
- reports on Lewandowski’s unceasing attempts to be designated a “law-enforcement officer” and issued a government badge and weapon — despite his obvious inability to qualify for either.
There are many other scandalous details within the Journal’s remarkable, lengthy chronicle of Noem’s incompetence and self-importance. Several of them would have been firing offenses in any previous administration. But of course, the punch line is that nobody cares nowadays, because we all understand Donald Trump is the last person to fire anyone on morals charges.
Noem and Lewandowski may still be wedded to others, but they’re clearly now joined to one another at the hip, at least politically. She needs him to be the “brains” — I use this term advisedly — of the operation; he needs her to be the “front.” It strangely reminds me of the relationship Trump has to his own adviser Stephen Miller, increasingly dependent on his unconfirmed amanuensis to translate his ill-formed impulses into something resembling policy, though not always for the better. (The parallels really are striking; it’s turtles all the way down with this administration in many ways, as Trump’s subordinates end up recreating his own dysfunctional style.)
The true import of the WSJ piece about Noem’s incompetence is not necessarily what it reveals. What matters is that you’re reading about it in the pages of the Journal now. This kind of piece can only come from deep sourcing within the administration — the Trump-friendly part of the administration, mind you, not “deep state hacks.” (Complain about anonymous sourcing all you wish — I have long learned to read between the lines when it comes to journalists elevating the parochial gripes of bureaucratic infighters — but the fire-to-smoke ratio here is convincing.) She has lost the allegiance of those she works with, from top to bottom. Corey Lewandowski won’t be able to save her from that.
My assumption is Noem will not be fired by Donald Trump — she can’t be; nobody is going to sit through a DHS confirmation battle in the Senate with midterms approaching — but she has been back-benched, and it looks to be permanent. Now she limps along in public, like a horse with a shattered leg, waiting only for a dignified moment to be properly put down. Don’t lament. Instead, remember Cricket. It feels like karmic justice to me.
Giant Metaphor Alert
I regret to inform you that Washington, D.C., is currently full of sh**. I know, I know — this is nothing new. But this time the matter feels a bit more acute: Nearly a month ago, on January 17, a 72-inch sewer pipe broke along the border of our nation’s capital and the state of Maryland — very close to where I grew up, near the Clara Barton Parkway exit of the Beltway — and sent over 240 million gallons of raw sewage straight into the Potomac River.
Worry not, D.C. and Maryland residents! Most of the fecal and waste material apparently has been safely quarantined in the C&O Canal, which I have to imagine will make your next stroll upon the canal path even more pleasant than it usually is once you get to Glen Echo. Anyway, the Potomac River south of Carderock is more or less off-limits to human beings for the foreseeable future, and D.C. authorities are warning that it will take up to ten months to repair the broken pipe.
This isn’t getting enough attention. The nation’s capital has been hit with an ecological and engineering disaster, and it’s largely been a topic for Twitter journos and local news radio, while attracting some national coverage. On the one hand, I think, “Well, the Washington Post sure picked a bad time to axe their Metro desk staff.” On the other hand, I can’t imagine they’d be too interested in what amounts to an indictment of the blue-state governance of everyone in the region. The real story here is that denizens of the nation’s capital are being taxed at blue-state rates for the privilege of receiving third-world utilities and public safety.
Robert Duvall, 1931-2026: It’s Been Quite a Party
On Sunday, Hollywood legend Robert Duvall passed away at the age of 95. News of his passing has come too late for me to include more than a few perfunctory words here, but Duvall’s greatness needs no arguing in any event, and I wanted to at least say something, because Bobby Duvall was special to me as an actor.
Always a bit older than the generation of Hollywood stars he became famous with — his first (and extremely memorable) film credit was as Boo Radley in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird — Robert Duvall carried himself on-screen with a quiet gravitas and an energy far different than the hallmarks of his younger peers like De Niro, Pacino, and Hoffman. After years of working in stage and television, Duvall’s screen career began to take off in the late ’60s with small but significant supporting roles in films like True Grit and M*A*S*H. (He also starred in the little-seen debut movie from a USC film school grad named George Lucas.)
But it was his role as Tom Hagen in 1972’s The Godfather that immediately catapulted Duvall — along with the rest of the cast — to national prominence. I won’t bother with praise you’ve already read elsewhere, describing Duvall’s quiet scene-stealing as the Corleone family’s adoptive brother and loyal consigliere. Suffice it to say that I found him to be the most compelling character in the entire saga — the calm, rational insider who is nevertheless aware that, to others, he is seen as an outsider — and regret that Coppola wrote him out of The Godfather Part III over a pay dispute.
Then again, seeing how The Godfather Part III turned out, maybe Duvall was better off skipping it to do a TV miniseries. Yes, it’s deeply ironic that, for all of Robert Duvall’s classic film moments — Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini, his Oscar-winning turn in Tender Mercies, even his surprisingly great out-of-nowhere supporting role in the forgotten 2012 Tom Cruise blockbuster Jack Reacher — my favorite performance of his remains that of Augustus “Gus” McCrae in the 1989 CBS adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
McMurtry claims he wrote Lonesome Dove to demystify what he believed to be the “romance of the West.” He also admits that he failed, and that a large part of the reason for this is the legendary on-screen chemistry between Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones (who, it must be noted, was three years younger than I am right now when he played Woodrow Call). Duvall well appreciated how lucky he was to play the key role in this grand epic, calling it “my Hamlet” and recognizing how much he gained from having such rock-solid support to work with (aside from Jones, also Danny Glover, Diane Lane, and Anjelica Huston, among an embarrassment of other great actors).
Maybe that’s why Duvall proved so capable of immersing himself in key supporting or co-starring roles — much like his close friend, onetime roommate, and fellow recent departee, Gene Hackman. Both of them made the most of the fact that they didn’t “look” like leading men, which became a blessing for Duvall as an actor: That freed someone as diligent about his craft as he was to commit completely to inhabiting his characters, always naturally, without pomp or artifice. Nothing about Duvall ever felt mannered, even when he was ranting at the top of his lungs or delivering a hellfire sermon.
R.I.P. to a man who spent his life as an actor, playing parts written by others, yet who never for a moment felt less than 100 percent real. Goodbye, Bobby. Just like Gus McCrae said, reflecting on it all at the end of his life: “My God, it’s been quite a party.”
Until next week.