Hours after Comedy Central’s “South Park” brutally portrayed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as a Botoxed ICE agent with a melting face, she went on Glenn Beck’s podcast to denounce the episode as “lazy” and “petty.”
But within a day, she was posting the very image the show mocked her with — eyes glowing red like the Terminator — as her official profile photo.
The move came off less like a power play and more like damage control — an attempt to mask her earlier irritation with the show, which had since gone viral on social media.
Noem insisted she hadn’t even seen the episode, titled “Got a Nut,” because she’d been busy “going over budget numbers and stuff.”
She told Beck, “It never ends, but it’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. Only the liberals and the extremists do that. If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can’t, they just pick something petty like that.”
The episode did that and more. Noem was depicted as cold and heartless. In it, school counselor Mr. Mackey loses his job and joins ICE.
During training, he watches a recruitment video where a glammed-up Noem shoots multiple dogs — a dark callback to her own admission last year that she’d shot an “untrainable” family dog named Cricket.
Later, she leads raids on a “Dora the Explorer” concert and even in heaven, telling ICE agents to “only detain the brown ones.”
Donald Trump’s animated counterpart quips that Mackey should be the new face of Homeland Security because Noem’s “face freaks me out,” referencing long-running rumors about cosmetic work. In the closing credits, cartoon Noem goes on a shooting spree in a pet store.
Beck tried to console Noem by recalling the time South Park mocked him, saying, “Welcome to the club.” He admitted he and his son laughed about it. But Noem didn’t crack a smile.
Perhaps Noem’s only option was to figure out a way to take the joke in stride, because South Park had no intention on letting up. Soon after she launched her complaints, South Park made Noem’s melting face the profile photo of its Facebook page.
Her portrayal comes after months of criticism — even from conservative media — for staging glamorous photo ops alongside ICE agents.
In April, Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing a “great job” as DHS secretary but urged her to “stop trying to glamorize the mission and put yourself in the middle of it as you cosplay ICE agent, which you’re not. I can’t stand these photo ops.”
The episode also roasted Trump and Vice President Vance, though Vance’s reaction was markedly different. He posted a screenshot of his cartoon likeness on X with the caption, “Well, I’ve finally made it.”
One of Noem’s defenders on social media insisted she took the episode in stride, then pivoted to blasting liberals for nitpicking.
“You guys are such snowflakes that you cannot fathom the fact that some people don’t take themselves so seriously that they can sit there and laugh at a joke that’s being made about them,” the user wrote on the official Threads account. “You want them to be offended so bad and it’s killing yall knowing that they’re laughing at it too lmao. It’s a joke not a dick so idk why you’re all taking this so hard but it’s hilarious to watch you guys projecting.”
But the comments section quickly shredded that defense.
“She literally spoke out and said it wasn’t funny,” one person replied.
“Honey, she was whining about it on the radio the next day lmao,” another added.
One user had a more insightful take, “Unfortunately she already complained about it, so this just a very obvious over correction making it obvious that she is upset about and trying to pretend like she isn’t.”
Others accused the pro-Noem voice of hiding behind a troll account, and worse.
“Lot to unpack here, but I think the most important thing to take away from this is that you are an absolute pea-brained bootlicking shitheel.”
The day before the episode aired, Homeland Security had even used a South Park-style image to promote ICE recruitment. By the next day, Noem had adopted the parody as her own profile picture, glowing eyes and all — a bold attempt to flip the narrative. Yet, given her earlier complaints, many saw it as a backpedal rather than a clapback and the jokes just continued to pour in.
One user queried Noem, “Are you done crying about it yet?”
“It’s cute how you act like you guys are in on the joke. Not this time, lol,” one commenter keenly observed. “And I’m sure a woman who does all the crap to her face in a desperate bid to look younger is oh-so unbothered.”
Great Job A.L. Lee & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star Source link for sharing this story.
