So much is happening in the news right now that is serious and demands attention, engagement and analysis. But, for whatever reason, I can’t stop getting distracted by the odd stories here and there that prompt a “What the hell?â€
And this week, that story happens to be Homeland Security Secretary and border agent cosplayer Kristi Noem getting her purse stolen at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., on Easter Sunday.
Sure, purse snatching, pickpocketing and similar crimes happen all the time. But not to the secretary of Homeland Security. Noem has Secret Service protection. So, in a way, this is a serious story, because an unidentified white man wearing a mask was seen on surveillance footage taking the bag. It begs the question of how he got so close to the table of one of the top officials in the entire U.S. government with “security†in her title. Noem’s Homeland Security access badge was in that purse, by the way. That’s bad.
Where it gets weird is what else was in the bag: makeup (replaceable and not out of the ordinary); medication (that sucks but, again, replaceable); her passport (oops); driver’s license (understandable it would be in the bag, but double oops); apartment keys (not good knowing some random person has those); blank checks (also not good); and $3,000 in cash (wait, what?!).
Three thousand dollars in cash? I’m no government official. I’ve never been on the lecture circuit, and I make a middle-class living. Understandably, I’ve never had anywhere close to that amount of money on me in paper bills, or in any other form. If I had to suddenly come up with $3,000 — and the only scenario I can envision for that is a low-stakes ransom situation where the kidnapper hasn’t adjusted for inflation since the 1970s — it would be a full-blown crisis. And Kristi Noem has that rattling around in her purse?
Homeland Security said Noem was carrying that fat roll around because she had her family in town and was going to treat them to dinner, activities and gifts. Seriously? Activities? I’m guessing that, for $3,000, there’s someone on an island somewhere who will let you hunt humans for sport, which I think Noem would be into. But then there’s nothing left over for dinner or gifts, unless it’s an all-inclusive type of deal.
Some pundit somewhere only half-jokingly suggested that much cash and the presence of her passport suggested Noem’s purse was a “bug-out bag†— an emergency kit for fleeing authorities or a disaster. We’re only a few months into this administration but I can certainly understand why someone might be prepped for such an occurrence. Noem might even know something we don’t, although that sounds crazy.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s all that weird that a top government official would have their passport on them. What surprises me, and why I view the bug-out bag theory as a joke, is that there was no mention of a firearm. This is the woman who, in a book, glorified shooting her dog. And she recently posed for a photo op in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement uniform clutching a rifle (with the barrel inadvertently pointed at an ICE officer’s face). Noem likes guns and is pretty loose with how she handles them. It’s almost weird there wasn’t one in her purse. It’s possible she had a piece holstered on her body somewhere, I guess. I assume any Easter toast or pre-meal prayer with the Noem family at a restaurant concludes with someone firing a handgun in the air.
My mind keeps going back to the cash, though. Maybe it’s because it’s just that foreign to me, but whenever I see someone flicking Benjamins from a thick wad of legal tender, my mind goes two places: drug dealer or mob adjacent, if not mob entangled. I know that’s probably a horribly misguided, sweeping generalization that doesn’t leave room for people who overcompensate for their insecurities by waving money around, but ... well, I guess there’s no but.
I’ll admit I’m kind of jealous. I’d love to have so much money I could be stupidly cavalier about carrying and losing $3,000 in hard currency. Maybe one day I’ll get there, but not in this economy.
