Kristi Noem, Her Husband, And Trump World's Selective Outrage
Inside the media’s selective outrage machine
Cliff’s Note: Right now your edge isn’t just anger—it’s seeing the pattern.
This piece pulls back the curtain on how outrage is manufactured, how stories get buried, and how you’re being played in real time. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it—and that’s exactly why they hope you don’t look too closely.
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By David Shuster
The MAGA talent for moral indignation, echoed by most conservative media, has always been something to behold. It’s like a seedy circus – part spectacle and part absurdity, with carnival barkers on Fox News and elsewhere shouting about sin while quietly pocketing the proceeds. Now, that Trump team circus has returned, pitching its tent across much of the media and political world around Kristi Noem and her husband, Bryon Noem.
The breathless and sensational charge is that Mr. Noem may have indulged in a private life that contradicts the starch collared moral values advertised among the political right.
Some of us may not understand “cross-dressing” or engage in it. But the most important question in this alleged controversy is, where precisely is the victim?
The answer, so far as the pundits can manage, is that there is none—save perhaps for Kristi Noem. She insists the report about her husband was “shocking” and “devastating.”
In turn, ink is being spilled, cable TV panels are convening, and pearls are being clutched across mainstream and social media with vigor.
It’s a scandal, we are told, of the highest order. An affront to decency, a collapse of Bryon Noem’s character, a veritable Sodom on the prairie.
And still, I can’t help but notice that this moral fervor, particularly on the right, is curiously selective.
Because when the conversation turns to the lingering miasma surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, the temperature across the political and media world drops sharply.
Jane Doe #4 alleges that Donald Trump raped her in the 1980’s when she was an underage teenage girl. In 2019, the FBI considered Jane Doe #4 credible enough to interview her four times. The details about her story that could be confirmed have been confirmed by the FBI and by several independent journalists. Perhaps relatedly, the DOJ continues to withhold 37 pages of documents involving Jane Doe #4.
And yet, because her claims and the assertions of other victims remain “disputed” by Donald Trump and unproven in court, the political and media classes have retreated into a posture of exquisite caution, speaking in hushed tones if they speak at all.
The contrast with Bryon Noem is staggering.
Noem gets no due process or peace. He violated social expectations, and so we have a mainstream media feeding frenzy. Donald Trump allegedly abused underage girls. Yet with Trump, we continue to get mainstream media silence.
The explanation for this deceitfulness is painfully simple. In the Trump era, the modern machinery of outrage has no fixed principles. It is not animated by justice, nor by compassion, nor even by common sense. It is animated by opportunity. The key issue is usefulness, not wrongdoing.
For months, one of the most talked about “secrets” in Washington, D.C. has been an alleged affair between former DHS secretary Kristi Noem and her chief of staff and former Trump strategist Corey Lewandowski.
Some conservatives defended Noem, insisting her marriage back in South Dakota was “strained.”
Now, with the allegations against Bryon Noem, a few of these same conservatives are saying, “see, I told you so. Her marriage was a mess.”
And thus, a private Bryon Noem indiscretion—harmless, consensual, and entirely separate from the public interest—is being inflated by some MAGA types into a national emergency because it serves their narrative of the day.
“Poor Kristi Noem, she was a victim,” we are told. Meanwhile, far graver victim allegations against Donald Trump are being handled with the care of a museum curator dusting a fragile relic.
This is not morality. It is theater.
And like all bad theater, it requires a gullible audience willing to suspend disbelief—not in the facts, but in the pretense that the performance is guided by anything resembling principle.
Many consumers of news and politics, while often accused of gullibility, are still shrewd enough though to see through the trick. They recognize that the volume of outrage and shock over Bryon Noem bears no resemblance to the gravity of the offense. They understand that under Trump, the media and political game is rigged, not to conceal sin, but to allocate attention.
In this system, the only truly unforgivable act is to be on the wrong side of the spotlight, and the wrong side of Trump and his sycophants, including Kristi Noem.
In the meantime, the MAGA circus band plays on, the barkers keep barking, and the great Trump team carnival of selective indignation rolls forward, leaving behind not enlightenment nor justice, but only the lingering stench of hypocrisy.
Kristi Noem abused her position of power against humanity, against rule of law. Spent taxpayer dollars on a jet to have an affair, and possibly committed fraud using taxpayer dollars, and we're supposed to be shocked and outraged over her husband cross dressing? GTFO. Wake up people.
Instead of “underage teenage girl” just write ‘child’.