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President Trump Announced Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace Kristi Noem as DHS Secretary. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired March 05, 2026 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Senator Markwayne Mullin. The president says Noem will become special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. That is what the president is calling his new security initiative that he's planning to announce on Saturday in Florida, but that's certainly seen as a demotion.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, no doubt. This is a move that may not be a surprise to those who saw Noem's appearances on Capitol Hill this week. Even top Republican senators told CNN they'd lost confidence in her ability to lead the department.

We're, of course, covering the story from every angle. CNN's Kristen Holmes is at the White House and Manu Raju is live on Capitol Hill. Manu, first to you, I found it interesting that when you spoke to Senator Kennedy of Louisiana earlier this week, he said that it was up to the president whether Noem should stay at DHS or not, but that he was finding it very difficult to explain unexplainable behavior.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and that was a sentiment that began to really permeate within the Senate Republican conference over -- just not over her hearing performance from a couple of days ago, but everything that has happened about Minneapolis or comments about the two fatal shootings there, her rush to judgment before there's any investigation, and the difficult time that Republican senators had defending her through all of this.

One of the most outspoken critics has been Senator Thom Tillis. He is the one Republican who went as far as calling on her to resign, and he really berated her at that Senate Judiciary Committee hearing from earlier this week. I caught up with him earlier today amid the questions about whether Donald Trump could keep her at the job and whether other Republicans were joining him and pushing for her resignation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I have a problem with the way the agency is running. I have a problem with the disastrous response to Helene. I hear they put out another $80 million this week, but my goodness, they're billions behind.

So I think that the administration -- I'm doing my best to make sure the president understands just how poorly this organization is being run. And I believe the president gave her a vote of no confidence the moment he took her out of Minneapolis and put somebody that doesn't work in Homeland Security in charge. So why don't we just -- we know how the play should end, why don't we just end the play?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: But Tillis just told reporters that he supports nominating Markwayne Mullin, the senator from Oklahoma, his fellow Republican senator, for that position and others also voicing their support, including Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. So a sign that there is bipartisan support and a view among senators on both sides of the aisle that Mullin would be a step up. Of course, senators tend to look favorably upon people who are nominated from within the body to serve in the cabinet, which is one big reason why there is widespread expectation that he will be confirmed and potentially confirmed quickly.

But the big question is whether Mullin will even say yes to the job. He probably will, but he was just asked by reporters about this. He said that he and the president, they have connected, but they haven't really communicated about the plan.

He said, we still have to communicate and, quote, get on the same page and talk about how they're going to deal with this moving forward. So there's a lot of surprise. Shock within the Senate about how quickly this moved and surprise for Senator Markwayne Mullin himself that he has a new job. The question is, does he want it?

How quickly will the Senate act? Will he get confirmed to the position? He likely will get confirmed.

But the first two questions will be whether the president and him can get on the same page. And when he says yes to the president's announcement that he's the next choice for homeland security.

KEILAR: Manu, though, hard to imagine this is really a question, right? This seems like more a question in the -- a statement in the form of a question of President Trump asking maybe Mullin to take this position. How would he say no?

RAJU: Yes, exactly. I mean, of course, he's almost certainly going to say yes, but a crazier things have happened. People could say no to cabinet posts, but it doesn't happen much these days.

So there's high expectation that you'll get the -- he will accept this position and get confirmed to the position unless, of course, something changes, which tends to happen these days.

SANCHEZ: It does. Manu Raju live on Capitol Hill. Thanks so much for that.

Let's go to Kristen Holmes at the White House. And Kristen, as we've been monitoring Secretary Noem now, she's been at this event speaking in Nashville for roughly a half hour or so. She has not said anything about the news coming from the White House that she's being replaced as DHS secretary, even as she's taking questions from the audience. Your reporting is that she is aware that the president has announced her ouster, correct?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I have been told by a senior White House official that she is aware that she is no longer the Department of Homeland Security secretary and that President Trump has announced it.

[14:35:00]

Now, I do not know the order of events in terms of whether or not she learned before he actually posted this or during the time that he was posting this, that I'm still trying to get to the bottom of. But she is aware that he has put this out there.

Now, the other thing to note here is that she's been asked a number of questions, and nobody has asked her about it. So clearly, there's probably several people in that audience who don't know that this announcement just happened roughly an hour ago or less. One thing to keep in mind here is just two weeks ago, I was talking to a senior White House official, he said there was extreme reluctance within the White House to replace any of the cabinet secretaries ahead of the midterms.

They didn't want that to be a distraction from their midterm messaging. Obviously, again, the showing just how angry and basically done with Kristi Noem. President Trump had decided he was.

The other part that has been such a fascinating part to watch was the idea that in the aftermath of Minnesota and the aftermath of the shootings in Minneapolis, when Kristi Noem was being moved out of the state and out of that program, and Tom Homan was being brought in, there were a number of calls for her impeachment, largely from Democrats. And the White House at that point, officials inside telling me that President Trump was likely to react to the opposite to those calls, and instead of going along with this, that he was going to become more defiant in protecting Kristi Noem.

And certainly, we heard him talking in private and publicly, talking about how well that Kristi Noem had done at the border. And if you talk to White House officials at that time, they said, well, that was her main job. It was not supposed to be these kind of special operations in various states.

But obviously, again, all of this has shifted. We have seen now that President Trump has actually fired a member of his cabinet the first time in this second term, clearly bucking any idea that it was too tumultuous to do so ahead of the midterms, and instead replacing Kristi Noem with this staunch Trump ally, the senator from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, who has been a real advocate for President Trump, both when he talks to reporters on Capitol Hill and on the TV circuit, constantly defending the president.

So again, we're still learning the details of the sequence of events here, but it is clear that President Trump had grown increasingly irate, particularly since that Senate judiciary hearing and the conversations that he was having with lawmakers, Republican lawmakers. We're not giving him pause in any way to change his mind. You know, he wasn't getting a lot of pushback from these lawmakers when he was saying that he was considering firing her.

And instead, I was told that there were a number of names floating around in various conversations. You had lawmakers proposing people that they liked for this job. So it is quite a stark and stunning incident to happen here at the White House, just given what we know about this cycle. And we also, what we know about the fact that Kristi Noem, at the end of all of what we had seen as the turmoil and backlash in Minnesota, seemed relatively safe when it came to President Trump praising her in public. But obviously, again, that has shifted.

KEILAR: Yes, and she had become such a face of those operations, showing up with ICE to serve warrants, you know, in multiple cities, including in Minnesota. She did that in Chicago as well. So that was something that she certainly owned as that policy came under so much fire.

Kristen, thank you so much for that report from the White House.

CNN has actually just caught up with Markwayne Mullin. We are turning that sound so that we can bring it to you. He has spoken with President Trump. So we are going to tell you what he said. He talked a little bit about that and what's ahead.

We'll bring that to you right after the break.

[14:40:00]

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SANCHEZ: We're following breaking news to CNN. Kristi Noem out as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She actually just wrapped up her remarks in Nashville moments ago and did not address the news that she had been fired by President Trump. Notably, though, our reporting indicates that she was aware of the president's decision.

Let's go live to Capitol Hill now with CNN's Lauren Fox, because you actually spoke with her potential replacement, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who President Trump announced he is nominating to replace Noem.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and Mullin had a couple of really interesting things to walk us through. One of them, he joked at the time he still needed to talk to his wife about this news, given the fact that everything was moving very quickly up here on Capitol Hill.

He also said that he is going to be trying to earn every single vote he can get. And it's really important to note that a couple of Democrats who stopped at our cameras after this news broke made clear that they wanted to have a lot more assurances from Markwayne Mullin or whoever the ultimate nominee is over changes that may be made to the Department of Homeland Security, specifically on issues related to immigration enforcement. And Mullin made clear he is ready to have those conversations.

He says he wants to earn their votes. I pushed him specifically on Schumer's comments that the rot is throughout the agency and that replacing the person on the top is not necessarily going to be just enough. And he made clear that he's willing to have a conversation with Chuck Schumer or whoever wants to come to him.

So that is one of the dynamics that's at play right now.

[14:45:00]

It's really important to just point out that Mullin is very close with Republicans in his conference as well as Democrats in their caucus. And he has had these relationships that he's been part of over the course of the last three years since he's been on Capitol Hill in the Senate specifically.

So that is one dynamic that makes this very interesting, because while the DHS department is something that Democrats have been lobbying and arguing against over the course of the last several months, the reality is they do like Markwayne Mullin. And that is going to be a very difficult line to walk over the course of the next several months.

KEILAR: Lauren, can Democrats then, I mean, can they get any concessions, even if they may be more inclined to confirm a Mullin than someone else Trump might have picked, can they get some concessions from the Trump administration as far as the policy goes in this confirmation process?

FOX: Yes, Brianna, it's important to point out that this isn't happening in a vacuum, right? The Department of Homeland Security is currently shut down right now. There are ongoing negotiations between Democratic leadership, the administration, Republican leadership over how to unstick that agency.

And you could see a world, a universe in which some of those concessions become part of the negotiation of getting Mullin across the finish line. And it is kind of a funny moment that happened as Mullin was driving away in his Jeep. He was stopped by one of his Democratic colleagues, Peter Welch.

And I approached Welch right after their conversation and said, what did you talk to him about? And he said he simply joked, you know, Markwayne Mullin is going to be doing all of the arrests. That guy's really tough.

And I thought that was kind of this sort of funny, lighthearted moment in the sense that it shows, you know, Welch is a very liberal member of the United States Senate. And still, he has a close relationship, right, with Markwayne Mullin.

SANCHEZ: Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill, please stand by. Let us know if you hear from more lawmakers. Let's go to Priscilla Alvarez, who's getting some new reaction from officials at DHS.

Several sources over the last few months had expressed frustration with Noem's leadership. What are they saying now that she's gone?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris, I don't think we can overstate how frustrated so many in the department had been, especially given the firings of personnel and just the general management of the department. And over the last couple hours, my sources say that officials have been texting with one another, calling one another, trying to understand how this happened, how quickly this happened, because just as we had learned from the president about this change, so did they in the same way. In some cases, it was me reaching out where they learned that the secretary had been ousted.

Now, one Homeland Security official calling this, quote, "... long overdue," going on to say that "She wasn't qualified for the position from the beginning." Another Homeland Security official saying that she, quote, paid the price after what they alleged was her exploiting the role for personal gain. Again, this is a department that is charged with the one of the president's priorities, which is his deportation campaign and his immigration enforcement.

Almost the entire department has pivoted to focusing on immigration in a really intense way. And so everyone within this department has been working under tremendous pressure. And there had been ongoing concern about, again, the way she managed the department, but also how she managed it with her chief advisor, Corey Lewandowski.

This had been simmering frustration that just got worse, really got to a boiling point in Minneapolis after the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens by federal agents. Because of the response by the secretary, by her drawing conclusions so quickly after those incidents, it was really in that moment -- that was a watershed moment within the Department of Homeland Security, where almost everyone felt that frustration and tension, even those who had been supporting the secretary up until this point. So they had been waiting to see if the secretary was going to make it day by day, week by week within this administration, knowing, of course, there was so much tension.

We should note that the president has said that she will serve until March 31st. And we still have not heard from her on this. We had been playing her conference.

She did not mention it there. So we're waiting to see if she provides a statement about this latest move.

KEILAR: Yes, very curious about that. Priscilla, if you could stand by for us.

Let's bring in Deborah Fleischaker, who's a former DHS executive secretary under President Biden and also was at ICE. Thank you so much for being with us to talk a little bit about this. If you can react to this news, but also specifically, we should really reflect on the moment that we're in.

So if you could do that, because, you know, we just had a shooting in Austin that was inspired potentially by these strikes in Iran. Is there a risk in DHS leadership being in a transition at this critical moment?

[14:50:00]

DEBORAH FLEISCHAKER, FORMER ICE ACTING CHIEF OF STAFF: Thank you so much for having me on.

I am glad to see that Secretary Noem's cruel and corrupt time as DHS secretary is going to come to an end. I don't know that it answers any -- I see no indication that the administration intends to change its goals or tactics, however.

Guardrails around DHS remain enormously important. I hope that the new nominee is going to be willing to discuss them and then that can be part of his nomination. I think ultimately for me, as long as Stephen Miller is running immigration policy, he's effectively running DHS.

And I'm not sure that a change at the top will change that.

SANCHEZ: Do you think, Deborah, that if these hearings on Capitol Hill had perhaps gone differently, if Republican senators had been less eager to get answers from her on some of the questions regarding that ad campaign, for example, that she would still be on the job, even given what we've seen unfold in Minneapolis and other cities across the country?

FLEISCHAKER: It seems to me my read is that the president was embarrassed by Edwards questioning about the ad campaign. There didn't seem to be significant heartburn about the 220 million expenditure or about the ad campaign when it happened. It seems like the calling out of it and the putting sort of positioning the president is putting him in a tough spot.

I think that seems to have made some impact.

KEILAR: And so we've been talking with our Hill reporter about whether any concessions could be derived by Democrats out of this process. Even if Markwayne Mullin is someone that they, you know, they like, he does have some appreciation from his Democratic colleagues. What do you think Democrats might seek?

And as you said, do you feel with Stephen Miller at the helm, nothing really changes? Is there anything they really can seek?

FLEISCHAKER: I think they are seeking it. I think that they have been seeking it. I think that the concessions that they will be seeking, the guardrails that they're seeking are going to remain the same.

Body-worn cameras for everybody conducting immigration enforcement. No masked immigration enforcement officers roaming our streets. No non- consensual warrantless entry into people's homes, right? The list of requests on the Democratic side are not extreme. And they really go back to longstanding status quo on how immigration enforcement has been conducted for decades. And so, you know, I certainly hope that those items are under serious consideration and that Senator Mullins will be open to them as he looks -- as he heads into the acting secretary role.

SANCHEZ: How do you think news like this, as Brianna alluded to, the potential for that shooting in Austin to be related to a greater threat because of the war in Iran, as there's a shutdown in the background, as there's this turmoil regarding the leadership, how does all that impact the rank and file at DHS?

FLEISCHAKER: I think it's challenging for the rank and file. They have been asked, I mean, each department has been turned into an arm of immigration enforcement. I know that many, many of these people would like to get back to their day jobs.

I think that immigration enforcement, while important, isn't the single most important public safety threat this country faces. And we should stop treating it like it is.

KEILAR: Deborah Fleischaker, thank you so much for the conversation. We do appreciate it.

Let's talk now with our Jeff Zeleny as we are watching this moment. It's really a big moment here. Kristi Noem being ousted, being pushed into this envoy role, which is to give her, I guess, sort of a landing pad. But I mean, we know what it is. Right. And Markwayne Mullin sort of still working out the details and what is really a sort of a quickly shuffled together situation.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, she's been fired. I mean, there's no other way to put it. Yes, she's been given a bit of a parachute out here, but she's the first sitting member of the Cabinet who's been fired in this Trump administration, who was a Cabinet level position -- Mark Walls was fired. But the first member of the Cabinet who's been fired.

But look, she came into this role. Immigration was a strength of the president.

[14:55:00]

It is now a political weakness of the president, not entirely of her own making, but in part because of her own making. The president has been dissatisfied with her since Minnesota. There's no doubt.

So going forward here, this offers the administration a chance to at least reset a bit. But there's no indication that any policies will change here. But the confirmation hearings unfolding during a midterm election year are going to be fascinating.

Right now, it only requires a simple majority in the Senate to be confirmed. So it's almost certain that he will be confirmed. Unclear if any Democrats will support him. It's unlikely.

But this is going to be an opportunity for the administration to have all of their policies reviewed. And to your question, I think earlier about what concessions will there be, will there be any changes in the administration? I think it's very possible because the White House is looking for a reset on immigration for the politics of this.

It's important to the midterm election outcome. So I think this offers the president a chance to reset a little bit here. But look, a huge embarrassment for her, largely because she lost Republican support from those hearings this week because of her actions, her money spending, et cetera.

SANCHEZ: And as you were just speaking, we got some press reporting on Capitol Hill Senate Majority Leader John Thune saying that he hopes to quickly begin the process of confirmation, describing Markwayne Mullin as well vetted.

Stay with CNN. A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts after a quick break.

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