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With her Mar-a-Lago face, big hooped earrings, and love of cowboy cosplay, Kristi Noem is not exactly known for a refined sense of style.
Now PunchUp can exclusively reveal that Noem’s dubious taste also extends, perhaps predictably, to interior design—specifically the bedroom tucked in the back of the Boeing 737 MAX she leased on the taxpayer’s dime during her tenure as Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary.
Noem, 54, justified the staggering cost of the luxury jet—which she chartered for $70 million—by insisting it was a vital tool for “high-profile deportations” and “long-range command and control.”
In reality, the plane’s most frequent passengers were Noem herself and her senior adviser Corey Lewandowski, 52, with whom she has long been alleged to have been conducting an extramarital affair. The pair—both married to other people, with children—were reportedly jetting around the country in considerable comfort, availing themselves of the aircraft’s queen-size bed, bar, kitchen, showers, and flat-screen TVs. Its “exceptional interior design” was created, according to promotional materials, by “renowned New York designer Peter Marino.”
Now Noem is gone—fired by Trump, 79, last month amid a cascade of scandals, including the jet itself—and the plane has found a glamorous new mistress. The White House has decided to re-gift it, per the Wall Street Journal, to First Lady Melania Trump and select Cabinet members.
Though, as PunchUp reported last week, the cost of DHS buying it for the White House was actually $108 million, or 54 percent more than the department had publicly claimed.
During bruising congressional hearings in the days before her ouster, Noem was mocked about the mile-high bedroom and, separately, asked whether she had “sexual relations” with Lewandowski. Noem did not respond directly to the questions. Instead, she dismissed the rumors—which date back to September 2021— as “tabloid garbage.”
Read more: Read The Swamp’s Bombshell ICE Barbie Reporting, Now in the Congressional Record
Nobody knows what, if anything, the pair got up in their jet’s flying bed. Nor what it looked like—until now.
But PunchUp has exclusively obtained photos of the scandal-hit pad, which raise a lot of uncomfortable questions—like where on the plane they keep the barf bags?
You’d also have to ask why anyone would choose to spend such a staggering amount of money on a plane that looks like a ski chalet designed by the production team behind the Austin Powers movies. Or, as one administration source told PunchUp: “The plane’s ‘shagtastic’ interior resembles a 70s Motel 6 off the Jersey Turnpike."
Take the bedroom. The brown shag carpet and glossy faux-wood paneling are tacky enough, but the green strip lighting radiating from beneath the queen bed screams 1970’s brothel.
The bathroom isn’t much of an improvement, with its grey-marbled walls and more strip-lighting. It is worth noting, however, that the Neutrogena “Ultra Gentle” daily facial moisturizer pictured below is a very reasonable drugstore purchase.
The bathroom also features a digitally controlled shower cubicle that apparently doubles as a sauna and steam room, offering temperatures perhaps akin to those in one of Noem’s notorious ICE jails.
Next to it is a square toilet with a padded lid… inexplicably made of cream-colored leather? (It is wipe-clean, which is something, we suppose. And no, we’ve no clue what the buttons do either.)
PunchUp’s exclusive reporting last week revealed that the White House has twice fudged the truth about the cost of Trump buying the aircraft and who exactly is footing the bill now that Noem’s career has ended with a whimper akin to the tragic last yip of the “untrainable” puppy she blasted to death. RIP Cricket.
DHS continues to insist the jet cost just $70 million, but PunchUp’s sources say the actual price tag is almost $40 million higher.
For those who don’t recall—where have you been?—two congressional hearings saw lawmakers grill Noem over an extensive list of scandals with the same gusto as Greg Bovino menacing an immigration rights office.
She struggled to hold up under the brutal flurry of questions. They ranged from her leasing of the jet over the past year, speculation over her alleged affair with Lewandowski, the $220 million she splurged on an ad campaign which basically just featured her sat on horseback blowing smoke up Trump’s substantial ass, and her embarrassing efforts to justify her agents’ murder of two American protesters as a response to “domestic terrorism.”
Trump ditched Noem after the dismal performances, but decided that the jet could stay. However, the White House would be having it—perhaps in an attempt to get Melania to spend more time in D.C.—even though ICE would still be footing the bill.
“The White House is essentially telling ICE: you didn’t have any say, but fuck you, pony up the cash and hand over the keys,” one top administration official told us.
The president is, sources have told PunchUp, rumored to be considering a complete refit now that his office has yoinked out of Homeland Security’s hands an aircraft deemed by insiders to be more luxurious than Air Force One.
Of course, that will cause its taxpayer-funded costs to hit even ‘greater’ heights.
And, with Trump renowned for being even tackier than Noem, we dread to think what gold leaf horrors he has in store for that bedroom, which he will at some point probably share photos of with reporters, instead of talking about the tragic deaths of American troops in the unpopular wars he keeps starting.
TRUMP HAS DESTROYED THE U.S., AND IS NOW WORKING ON GASLIGHTING THE MAGATS.
Did they lease it for $70M then buy it for $108M??! The article is confusing. Facts, please.