How Kristi Noem, Mt. Rushmore and Trump Fueled
Speculation About Pence’s Job
After Ms. Noem, the South Dakota governor, flew to
Washington on Air Force One, rumors about her ambitions ensued. She made a
second trip to smooth things over with Mike Pence.
Jonathan
MartinMaggie Haberman
By Jonathan
Martin and Maggie Haberman
Aug. 8,
2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/us/politics/kristi-noem-pence-trump.html
WASHINGTON
— Since the first days after she was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018,
Kristi Noem had been working to ensure that President Trump would come to Mount
Rushmore for a fireworks-filled July 4 extravaganza.
After all,
the president had told her in the Oval Office that he aspired to have his image
etched on the monument. And last year, a White House aide reached out to the
governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar
with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount
Rushmore?
So last
month, when the president arrived in the Black Hills for the star-spangled
spectacle he had pined for, Ms. Noem made the most of it.
Introducing
Mr. Trump against the floodlit backdrop of his carved predecessors, the
governor played to the president’s craving for adulation by noting that in just
three days more than 125,000 people had signed up for only 7,500 seats; she
likened him to Theodore Roosevelt, a leader who “braves the dangers of the
arena”; and she mimicked the president’s rhetoric by scorning protesters who
she said were seeking to discredit the country’s founders.
In private,
the efforts to charm Mr. Trump were more pointed, according to a person
familiar with the episode: Ms. Noem greeted him with a four-foot replica of
Mount Rushmore that included a fifth presidential likeness: his.
But less
than three weeks later, Ms. Noem came to the White House with far less fanfare
— to meet not with Mr. Trump, but with Vice President Mike Pence. Word had
circulated through the Trump administration that she was ingratiating herself
with the president, fueling suspicions that there might have been a discussion
about her serving as his running mate in November. Ms. Noem assured Mr. Pence
that she wanted to help the ticket however she could, according to an official
present.
She never
stated it directly, but the vice president found her message clear: She was not
after his job.
There is no
indication Mr. Trump wants to replace Mr. Pence. Mr. Trump last month told Fox
News that he’s sticking with Mr. Pence, whom he called a “friend.”
Yet with
polls showing the president trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive
Democratic nominee, and Republicans at risk of being shut out of power in
Congress, a host of party leaders have begun eyeing the future, maneuvering
around a mercurial president.
Senator Tom
Cotton of Arkansas was in New Hampshire late last month, Senator Rick Scott of
Florida is angling to take over the Senate Republican campaign arm to cultivate
donors, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming is defending Dr. Anthony S.
Fauci, the government’s leading expert on infectious disease, while separating
herself from Mr. Trump on some national security issues.
At the same
time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is attempting to shore up his conservative
credentials by pushing a hard line on China, and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and
Rand Paul of Kentucky are attempting to reclaim their standing as fiscal hawks
by loudly opposing additional spending on coronavirus relief.
Drawing
less attention, but working equally hard to burnish her national profile, is
Ms. Noem. The governor, 48, has installed a TV studio in her state capitol,
become a Fox News regular and started taking advice from Mr. Trump’s former
2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who still has the president’s ear.
Next month,
she’ll address a county Republican dinner in Iowa.
“There
seems like there might be some interest on her part — it certainly gets
noticed,” Jon Hansen, a Republican state representative in South Dakota, said
of Ms. Noem’s positioning for national office.
Her efforts
have paid off, as evidenced by the news-driving celebration at Mount Rushmore.
Yet Ms. Noem’s attempts to raise her profile have not been without
complications. And they illustrate the risks in political maneuvering with a
president who has little restraint when it comes to confidentiality, and a
White House that shares his obsession about, and antenna for, palace intrigue.
To the
surprise of some of her own advisers, Ms. Noem flew with Mr. Trump to
Washington on Air Force One late in the evening after his Mount Rushmore
speech. Joined by Mr. Lewandowski, she and the president spoke for over an hour
privately during the flight — a fact that Mr. Trump and some of his aides soon
shared with other Republicans, according to officials familiar with his
disclosure.
An aide to
Ms. Noem, Maggie Seidel, said she did not raise the vice presidency with Mr.
Trump. Mr. Lewandowski, who is a paid adviser to the Pence-aligned Great
America PAC, also denied that he or the governor ever raised the subject of
replacing Mr. Pence on the ticket.
Mr.
Lewandowski, in a brief interview, described Ms. Noem as a star who “has a huge
future in Republican politics.”
A White
House official laughed at the notion that Mr. Trump is open to replacing Mr.
Pence, a move that, among other things, would exude desperation. And regarding
the phone call about adding the president’s image to Mt. Rushmore, the official
noted that it is a federal, not state, monument.
Still, word
of the Air Force One conversation quickly reached White House officials,
including those in Mr. Pence’s office.
A short
time later, Ms. Noem was jetting back to the capital, this time in less grand
fashion, after requesting a meeting with Mr. Pence.
White House
aides kept Ms. Noem from meeting with Mr. Trump again, one person familiar with
the planning said. But Mr. Pence’s office gladly put his session with the
governor on his public schedule and the vice president tweeted about it
afterward. Ms. Noem’s aides, hoping to tamp down questions about the second
trip, emphasized that she had also met with officials from the Department of
Health and Human Services and other agencies while she was in the capital.
One
official close to the vice president said that Ms. Noem did not discuss her Air
Force One flight with Mr. Pence but used the conversation to say she wanted to
help the campaign however she could. The official suggested that the vice
president’s team has an opportunity for her in mind: helping Mr. Pence prepare
to debate whichever woman Mr. Biden selects as his running mate.
Yet one
senior Trump adviser has recently lamented to others that Mr. Trump could have
boosted his re-election campaign had he replaced Mr. Pence with a woman,
according to people familiar with the conversations. One potential candidate
mentioned was Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who is close to
the president’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
However,
Mr. Pence has been an unstinting ally of Mr. Trump, and the vice president
retains a number of allies in the president’s orbit.
“I think
we’ll win South Dakota either way,” Brian Ballard, a lobbyist close to Mr.
Trump, said.
That these
kinds of speculative conversations about a different running mate have taken
place at all, though, illustrates the depth of frustration in Mr. Trump’s inner
circle over his political fortunes.With early voting starting in less than two
months in some states, the president’s ineffectual response to the coronavirus
has alienated voters and made the election primarily a referendum on him.
Speculation
has long lingered in Republican circles that Mr. Trump could swap out Mr. Pence
for Ms. Haley, partly because of the president’s own musings about it.
For a time
in 2018, Mr. Trump queried people about Mr. Pence’s loyalty. And officials in
the administration, including some close to Mr. Pence, said they believed that
Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump were angling to replace him with Ms. Haley.
In his
memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” the former national security adviser John
R. Bolton recounts how, flying to Iraq on Christmas night in 2018, the
president asked him for his opinion on jettisoning Mr. Pence.
Ms. Noem,
the daughter of a rancher who took over her family’s property after her father
died, has insisted that she has little appetite to return to Washington, where
she served as South Dakota’s sole House member for eight years before becoming
governor.
“She’s
focused on being the governor of South Dakota,” said Ms. Seidel, her senior
adviser.
The
president’s transition team contacted her about interviewing for a cabinet post
after the 2016 election, but she was already planning to run for governor then.
Some of her allies believe she’d also be open to the interior or agricultural
secretary roles in a second Trump term ahead of the 2024 race.
Ms. Noem’s
poll numbers have increased after a difficult first year in office. But to some
of her aides, Mr. Lewandowski, a hard-charging New Englander, has been a
disruptive presence in Pierre, South Dakota’s small state capital. He appeared
as a guest speaker at one luncheon with cabinet officials and pressed the
governor’s appointees to make a more aggressive case for her, irritating the
state officials, according to a person briefed on the events.
The
governor is now on her third chief of staff because the last one, Joshua
Shields, left in part because of the increased role of Mr. Lewandowski,
according to South Dakota Republicans.
Mr.
Lewandowski has sought opportunities that could benefit both Mr. Trump and Ms.
Noem. He recently discussed with the president’s advisers sending Mr. Trump to
the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., where there would be a big crowd
and where the two might have appeared together again; Mr. Trump’s aides did not
want him in the same politically safe state twice in two months.
Ms. Noem
has been a steadfast ally of Mr. Trump and has mirrored his handling of the
virus.
She has
pushed for schools to reopen for in-person classes, denounced mask mandates and
had South Dakota participate in a study on hydroxychloroquine, the malaria
treatment Mr. Trump has trumpeted.
It was her
star turn at Mount Rushmore, though, that has gotten Republicans talking and
been a boon to South Dakota tourism, the state’s second-largest industry.
Recognizing
the president’s immense interest in the monument, Ms. Noem worked with his
Interior Department to ensure there would be fireworks for the celebration, a
longstanding priority for Mr. Trump. There had been no fireworks there for the
previous decade because of environmental and fire-risk concerns.
In the
weeks leading up to the event, Ms. Noem went on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox
News to make clear she was expecting to “have a large event” for the president
and would not require social distancing or masks.
Then, as
the president sat watching her remarks in a bunting-wrapped box just offstage,
she praised America as a place where someone who was “just a farm kid” could
become “the first female governor of South Dakota.”
Jonathan
Martin is a national political correspondent. He has reported on a range of
topics, including the 2016 presidential election and several state and
congressional races, while also writing for Sports, Food and the Book Review.
He is also a CNN political analyst. @jmartnyt
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a
campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018
for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
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