Tom Homan: Defining Deviancy Down

A thug's thug.

The new face of the brute squad.

The puppy-killing ICE Barbie has been benched; Greg Bovino, the cosplaying Himmler has been fired. And Trump has dispatched Border Czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis. “Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me,” Trump declared.¹

While the humiliation of Kristi Noem and Bovino’s defenestration are delicious, we should stifle any naive exuberance about what’s happening here.

On the surface, it looks like Trump blinked. The Minneapolis purge is variously described as “an attempt to dial down tension and reset the mission,” and a pivot toward what the Associated Press calls “a more conciliatory approach” in the wake of ICE’s murders of unarmed protestors.

Unfortunately, this is piffle on stilts. As Ron Fournier notes: “Trump’s so-called shift in tone is a distraction, not a retraction.”

Indeed, regarding the deployment of Tom Homan as “conciliatory” is what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described as “defining deviancy down” — shifting standards to redefine anti-social or deviant behavior as more or less normal.

That seems especially apt in the case of Tom Homan, a thug’s thug — the guy who once accepted a bag full of cash,² and whose tough-talk cruelty has been described as “border thuggery repackaged as patriotism.”

Homan is a blister of a man who relishes and celebrates brutality. His rhetoric frequently frames all undocumented individuals as criminals and threats; and he is notorious for “promoting cruelty as deterrence” and normalizing abusive practices like ripping children from their parents. Indeed, he has been a voluble supporter of family separation.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the family separation,” he declared in 2023. “I’m still being sued over that…

“I don’t give a s***, right? Bottom line is, we enforced the law.”

Homan is also widely regarded as the architect of Trump’s campaign of “shock and awe,” and the creation of mass detention camps like “Alligator Alcatraz” to warehouse migrants in detention.

Last year Senator Chris Hollen (D-MD) described Homan as “the Trump thug who wants to deny due process rights to migrants and brag about tearing families apart.”

Conciliatory he is not.

After he lashed out at the Catholic Church for criticizing Trump’s immigration tactics, church leaders accused him of “defending cruelty under the guise of law and order. One diocese spokesperson described Homan’s stance as “moral failure that elevates brutality into public policy.”

In April, when he spoke to the Arizona legislature Homan’s rhetoric was so over-the-top — “In AZ speech, Trump 'border czar' tells immigrants they 'should be looking over your shoulder'“ — that Democrats walked out in protest.

Homan has also not hesitated to threaten to imprison local officials who resisted ICE invasions. He warned Boston’s police commissioner that he was “coming to Boston [and] bringing hell with me” after the city doubled down on non-cooperation. He has also suggested the possibility of prosecuting local leaders for “harboring and concealing” undocumented immigrants. Similarly, when troops were dispatched to Los Angeles, Homan warned that both LA Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom faced arrest if they resisted ICE’s enforcement efforts. He declared: “You cross that line; it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”

In January, he told ICE officers: “Just ignore all of that noise and keep focusing on taking out the garbage.”

So, no, this retromingent asshole is not going to be turning down the temperature in any meaningful or long-term way.

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Matt Labash gets it.

When he heard that some of Trump’s apologists are “celebrating that Trump’s replacing dog-shooter/Botox Barbie, Kristi Noem, with Tom Homan in his War on Minnesota (Homan allegedly being the adult in the room)”, Labash wrote, “I have to laugh.”

Not just because Homan is the “adult” who has been accused of accepting 50 grand in cash in a Cava bag, which he has yet to account for. But because Trump has a rich history of replacing one corrupt lackey with another.

So the real problem here isn’t the corrupt lackeys. It’s the corrupt mob boss who keeps appointing them. Which never seems to dawn on all the hopeful Trump HR hobbyists, whose willful naivete knows no bounds, and who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit them in their ballsacks.

Exit take: Phillips P. O’Brien nails it when he writes:

It’s not Bovino, it’s not Noem, it’s not Miller, Witkoff, Kushner or Vance. It is Trump, always Trump. Until people grasp that, they will not get how to fight back against this deliberate attempt to decimate the USA.

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BONUS: Today’s Drudge Report:

Meanwhile…

Via NBC: Minnesota Republican drops out of governor’s race, citing GOP’s handling of immigration enforcement

Republican Chris Madel announced Monday that he was ending his run for Minnesota governor, pointing to his party’s handling of immigration enforcement in his state as his rationale.

“I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so,” Madel said in a video posted to X.

In the nearly 11-minute video, Madel emphasized that he supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “originally stated goals” in its Operation Metro Surge in his state. He argued, though, that the operation “has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats.”

He pointed to U.S. citizens carrying papers to prove their citizenship and Hispanic and Asian law enforcement officers who he says “have been pulled over by ICE on pretextual stops.”

Madel, an attorney, also argued that “the national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.”

David Jolly Would Like a Word

This remarkable speech from our friend, David Jolly (former GOP congressman who is now the Democratic nominee for governor in Florida) is worth your time.

Today’s podcast

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Tuesday dogs (and other wildlife)

Snoozy Eli.

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Late night visitor to our backyard.

1. Trump’s announcement:

2. Nota bene: Who is Tom Homan, the White House border czar Trump is deploying to Minnesota?

Homan has come under some scrutiny since taking on his current role. The New York Times reported in September that Homan was recorded in 2024 accepting a bag that contained $50,000 in cash by undercover FBI agents in an investigation the Trump Justice Department later closed.

A person familiar with the operation had told CNN that Homan accepted the cash as part of a sting operation, and that Homan was being investigated for potential bribery and other crimes after he agreed to help the undercover agents secure government contracts. Homan, meanwhile, has said he didn’t “take $50,000 from anybody.”