Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski said Tuesday that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should be fired given her response to the killing of a 37-year-old Minneapolis man by DHS agents Saturday.
Tillis, of North Carolina, said Noem should be “out of a job.” Murkowski, of Alaska, said separately that “she should go.”
“I think what she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying,” Tillis told reporters. “It’s just amateurish. It’s terrible. It’s making the president look bad.”
Tillis and Murkowski are the first two Republican lawmakers to say outright that Noem should lose her Cabinet job. Trump is facing intense pressure to fire Noem in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, as well as calls from Democrats for her to be impeached.
In addition to Noem, Tillis faulted deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller for castigating victim Alex Pretti in the immediate aftermath of his shooting: “Those two people told the president before they even had any incident report whatsoever that the person who died was a terrorist. I mean that is amateur hour at its worst.”
Tillis also signaled he is open to operational changes at DHS in the wake of the shooting, including requiring an independent investigation. And he said he would be OK with a Democratic demand to split off DHS funding from a six-bill package up for debate in the Senate this week, with a stopgap measure in place while funding for the department is renegotiated.
“I wouldn’t have a problem with its absence,” Tillis said about the DHS bill.
