Check Out Kristi Noem's Luxury Flying Love Nest, It's Deporteriffic!

What else was the government supposed to spend $70 million on, its citizens?

There was a throwaway line buried in this weekend’s big Wall Street Journal report about DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, her (alleged!) plaything Corey Lewandowski, and the Coast Guard pilot they fired when he left Noem’s blanket on a plane, presumably because he was a little too busy, you know, flying the fucking aircraft to also act as Kristi Noem’s personal valet. Then they hired him back because they didn’t have anyone else to fly them home. We’re not exactly putting Rhodes scholars in charge of Cabinet departments these days.

The Journal casually mentioned that Noem and Lewandowski have been winging around in a luxury 737 MAX jet “with a private cabin in back.” Now the Substack News Not Noise has dug up some more details about this flying palace, and hoo boy does it sound fancy! Noem’s a long way from driving an old pickup around South Dakota looking for gravel pits where she can shoot her dog in peace.

News Not Noise also found a sales listing for the plane, plus some specs. The plane has a VVIP Configuration — that’s Very Very Important Person, for those of you not hep to billionaire lingo. It reportedly carries all of 17 passengers. Seventeen! The 737-800 you crammed yourself into so you could fly to Albuquerque to watch your least favorite cousin get married in a giant faux hogan seated as many as 200. And probably you were stuck with a normal airplane toilet instead of a bidet.

Yes, the plane reportedly has a bidet. Two, in fact:

It includes two private bedroom suites with queen sized beds. Two showers (in prior administrations even the First Lady’s plane didn’t have a single shower). Multiple bathrooms with electric bidets. A separate buffet bar. Multiple ultra-HDTVs. And a lounge with a wet bar and wine chiller.

Hilariously, DHS claims this plane is being used for both VIP travel and “high-profile deportations.” Oh please, spare us, anonymous DHS spokeswoman. Deportees are being put onto regular planes in shackles and are kept shackled for the duration of the flight. One Vietnamese deportee recently told Mother Jones she was shackled from the time she was put on a plane on a Monday night in Louisiana until she reached Hanoi on Thursday.

We know what you’re thinking: Hey, didn’t DHS buy Kristi Noem two luxury Gulfstreams for $172 million just last fall? And you are correct! This luxury 737, which reportedly cost $70 million, is in addition to that. And that’s before we get to any security modifications or expensive communications equipment that might need to be installed so Noem can consult with her minions in an emergency.

A couple more planes, and Noem will have her own air force.

What does that $70 million get you? Well, we already mentioned the private cabin/love nest in the back:

Bow-chicka-bow-bow.

Then there is the bathroom, complete with shower stall, for washing up after:

Damn, it’s not just nice, it’s all-inclusive Cancun resort nice. Just make sure your pilot/personal valet puts some bathmats down on that floor, it looks like it probably gets slippery when wet.

Here is the wet bar in a corner of one of the two large lounge areas. Trust us, this is only a small corner of said area:

There is a virtual walk-through of the plane here if you want to imagine you are Kristi Noem or one of her lackeys zooming around the country to her various photo shoots in a plane that high-level models would probably pull out each other’s extensions for.

Anyway. Your healthcare premiums may have shot up, and the nice guy who runs the neighborhood dry cleaners may have disappeared, and you may be in an ICE concentration camp sleeping on the tile floor of one room with 50 other people and one open toilet, and the funding for your research into an mRNA vaccine for cancer may have gone up in smoke, and housing may still be prohibitively expensive, and America’s standing in the world may be kaput, and the rest of the planet may loathe us.

But know one thing: if Kristi Noem can bang her sidepiece (allegedly!) in a queen-size bed whilst jetting off to her next LARP function, if she can have some chilled wine during the trip, and if her tuchus can be kept sparkling clean by the bidets in her luxury, taxpayer-funded jet, your sacrifices will have been worth it. To Kristi Noem, anyway.

[News Not Noise]

If you can spare a few dollars, Wonkette needs to upgrade our luxury jet.