The writing was on the wall for Noempublished at 19:03 GMT
Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House
For those observing the ins and outs of Washington politics, today’s announcement is no surprise – although it happened faster than some anticipated.
Just last night, I was talking to a source close to the Trump team that told me he believed Noem’s replacement was “likely”, although he added that Trump would probably wait a while to avoid seeming like he was responding to media pressure.
The US president had reportedly already been calling Republican lawmakers to feel out their responses, and a possible replacement.
Noem has been under intense scrutiny for months, particularly over her handling of the vast department and the aftermath of the deaths of two US citizens at the hands of federal agents in Minnesota earlier this year.
The final straw, however, appears to have been this week’s fiery hearings on Capitol Hill, in which she claimed that Trump had approved of a multi-million ad campaign in which she featured.
In an interview with Reuters earlier today, Trump said that wasn’t true.
“I never knew anything about it,” he said.
