Kristi the protestor, who asked to be identified only by her first name—spelled, to her displeasure, the same way as Noem’s—heeded a call from her church after the Minnesota shooting. On Thursday morning, she headed to Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, outside an ICE field office, where Noem’s press conference was initially scheduled. When the location was moved, she joined the throng of a few hundred protestors marching the 15 minutes south to the World Trade Center, where Vanity Fair’s offices overlooked a crowd swelling in opposition to Noem and a heightened security presence accompanying it.
“I’m actually here to pray for her horrible, rotten soul,” Kristi said, “and show my solidarity with Minneapolis.”
Emily Dentinger.
As the face of ICE’s operations, Secretary Noem figured prominently into a vivid array of signs on display: along with a drawing of a red MAGA hat refashioned to read, “You’re in a cult,” and calls for “justice for Renee Nicole Good,” a woman was demanding “HAG 4 HAGUE.” The sun was shining on this unseasonably warm winter day outside the building, and a protest monitor from the American Civil Liberties Union kept a steady eye on the large crowd of police officers on hand. As marchers circled the building, passing by the reflecting pools placed on the footprint of the Twin Towers, a masked Port Authority counterterrorism officer stood in the shadow of Santiago Calatrava’s winged Oculus structure, holding a bundle of plastic zip ties hooked to a carabiner.
In an interview with The New York Times in the hours after the shooting on Wednesday, Donald Trump insisted that Good “behaved horribly” and “ran [the ICE officer] over.” But when he reviewed footage from the incident with the paper’s reporters, he sounded less confident. “Well,” Trump said. “I—the way I look at it…”
“It’s a terrible scene,” he said as the video ended. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
Dan Adler.
