I went to Jared

He’s a gem of a legislator but it turns out that “trial by blanket” was not Noem’s undoing.

Image source: https://shopcgx.com/products/trt-cg-blanket (This is not the gift blanket that Jared Moskowitz offered to Kristi Noem. :) )

Silly me. I thought it was Jared Moskowitz who got Kristi Noem fired.

You know Jared Moskowitz, don’t you? He’s the Florida Democratic representative who, in February, asked Pam Bondi what she had written about him in her “burn book.” Bondi, as you may recall, appeared before a House Judiciary Committee, and in preparation, she (or more likely, staffers) wrote insults that she could hurl at committee members instead of answering questions.

From the moment that Bondi sneered and Moskowitz smiled, though, I went to Jared. This administration is a mockery of truth and justice of the first order. He mocks their mockery and in so doing, reminds us how heinous they really are. He can deflate all their sound and fury which signifies nothing. He knows just how to skewer their vainglory and reveal it for the ridiculousness it is.

So, when Kristi Noem appeared last week before that self-same committee, I clapped to learn that Moskowitz wore a “Justice for Cricket” button to the proceedings. Cricket was Noem’s dog until Noem shot Cricket for being a puppy doing puppy things.

Moskowitz later brought up the incident where Noem fired a pilot for forgetting her special blanket on an airplane. In honor of that traumatic incident, Moskowitz gave Noem a parting gift: “I got you a new Coast Guard blankie, the one you lost. So this is for you, you don’t leave empty-handed...”

Insert chef’s kiss. See what I mean about mocking and skewering?

Although, I sort of get the furor over the lost banket. If you’re a child (or uber-childish), a lost blanket is cause for concern. When I tried to get one of my grandsons to take a nap, he kept demanding the “Mickey binkit,” and he would not settle down without it.

I understood. I used to have a special “binkit” too. I called it my “Dee-Dee,” and I hauled it everywhere, but sadly, it got left behind in a Colorado hotel on family vacation.

So, wasn’t it nice of Representative Moskowitz to secure Noem a new blanket? I never got a new “Dee-Dee.” Four-year-old me had to carry on without it, miles from home.

Of course, for Noem, a grown woman, being given a new blanket caused some titters among the committee, and it was delicious to behold. Moskowitz certainly has a way of bringing sunshine to some awful occasions, and it makes me think more kindly about Florida.

So, the next day, when news broke that Noem was being replaced, I thought it was because of Jared Moskowitz. We’ve all been told how 45/47 despises being made fun of. He’s never gotten over being the butt of Obama’s jokes, for example.

But that wasn’t it at all.

The pundits say it had to do with Louisiana Senator John Kennedy’s questions about Noem’s outrageous spending on an ad campaign.

But there are variations in why that brought her tenure to an end. As if spending $220 million for cheesy ads wasn’t bad enough.

Some said it was because she threw the president under the bus, explaining that he had approved the expenditure. The president said he had not. She made him look bad, and that seemed like a good enough reason (at least to some) to fire her.

Author, teacher, and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said it was because of the ads themselves. Noem was in her native state, on horseback, with Mount Rushmore in the background, hogging the spotlight, in the very location where 45/47 wants his face blasted onto the rocks.

Journalist Jonathan V. Last said that the reason was that 45/47 had not been given a cut of Noem’s action. She paid all kinds of cronies in the production of the ads, but she didn’t share with the Big Cheese.

A few minutes later, Last and White House Correspondent Andrew Egger surmised a far knottier reason. They suggested that Senator Kennedy had been coached by Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller.

They posited that, given Miller’s well-known antipathy to Noem, he wanted Kennedy to ask about the ad campaign to make her look bad. In other words, this strategy would provide the way to get the president to finally get rid of a very problematic person.

I would never make it as a pundit. My mind would short-circuit trying to conceive of so many machinations and contortions. Moreover, does 45/47 really have to have a monetary slice of everything, everywhere, all at once?

Silly me. Of course, he does. How could I forget?

How could I forget the chief lesson Deepthroat gave Woodward and Bernstein while investigating Watergate: Follow the money. Always, follow the money.

Especially with this president.

But I would have much preferred to follow the satire instead. It made me feel so much better to laugh with Jared Moskowitz than to learn, yet again, that this is not a presidency. This is a bilking operation of massive—nay, epic—proportions.