Kristi Noem, Donald Trump's controversial Secretary of Homeland Security, also appears to be his new favorite female cabinet member. Considering this particular president, that's a mixed blessing at best. On August 21, 2025, Trump walked the streets of Washington, D.C., with the local police and National Guard troops to demonstrate how much safer he claims the nation's capital has become with the increased crackdown on crime. He then went on to order pizza for the group and delivered a speech in which
he complimented Noem in a strange way: "Where's my Kristi? Thank you, dear, thank you very much. She's been incredible," he said in Fox News coverage (per X). Then it got weirder: "And she can ride a horse like nobody. She gets on those horses, she whips those horses around ... "
It was an echo of three weeks earlier, when Trump gave similarly creepy praise to Karoline Leavitt on a Newsmax interview. He raved about his White House press secretary's looks and her snappy way of speaking, drawing out the word "lips" in a way that suggested he wasn't just thinking about her words. The president quickly asked, "Is she in the room?" (per Mediaite), surely knowing that Leavitt was.
One X user responding to the video of Trump complimenting Noem scoffed at the president's praise of her horseback riding technique, sharing a clip in which the former South Dakota governor seemed to be awkwardly bouncing around in the saddle. However, others felt that the bigger issue was the president's demeanor toward his female employees.
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Trump Seems To Have A Double Standard Toward His Staff
The president's rep as a ladies' man is no secret. Trump has not only been married three times, he's also the former owner of the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants, not to mention the defendant in a number of lawsuits involving allegedly unsavory conduct. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that he carries this attitude toward the female members of his cabinet. Note that Trump didn't call his White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller "my Stephen" when introducing him to the D.C. police force. The president did once compare Vice President JD Vance's looks to "a young Abraham Lincoln" (via Associated Press), but there was nothing suggestive in his compliment. But using terms like "dear" or "my [first name]" when addressing a woman in the workplace is considered highly unprofessional; in any other circumstance, an HR director would be knocking at the door of the Oval Office.
The White House women appear to take their boss's demeaning behavior in stride. In one podcast interview (per YouTube), Karoline Leavitt smiled as she described how Trump says, "Just have fun, honey," during their daily briefings before press conferences. It's unclear if Kristi Noem's reaction to the president's comments about her were positive or negative, or what she might have said to him afterward. If she felt uncomfortable, she may value her job too much to say so — which, sadly, proves that women in the workplace still have a long way to go.
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