The Daily Mail of London reported a shocking story about an alleged relationship between Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota, and Trump aide Corey Lewandowski.
- DailyMail.com uncovered evidence of Lewandowski and Noem’s fling: Dozens of trips that mixed business with pleasure, private flights and luxury resort stays
- The pair met up Friday for a Trump campaign rally in Rapid City, South Dakota, but were careful to have no public interaction – despite being close for years
- The two were first suspected of being romantically involved in 2021, but Noem scornfully dismissed the story as ‘total garbage and a disgusting lie’ at the time
A rising Republican star tipped by many to be Donald Trump‘s running mate should he win the presidential nomination has been involved in a clandestine affair for years, multiple sources tell DailyMail.com.
Married South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, 51 – who stresses her belief in ‘family values’ – and Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski, who is also married, began carrying on in 2019, if not before.
Vanity Fair jumped all over the story.
The Daily Mail has published an explosive report that South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a former Donald Trump aide, have been having a secret affair “for years”—at least since 2019. Noem’s spokesperson told the tabloid, “This is so predictable that you would attack Governor Noem less than a week after she endorsed Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States.” Neither have denied the Daily Mail’s reporting, and Vanity Fair has reached out to both of them for further comment.
A “family values” Republican, Noem has three children with her husband, Bryon. They’ve been married for over 30 years. Lewandowski married his wife, Alison, in 2005, and they have four children.
Lewandowski has a reputation of being just one of the many characters that Trump can’t quit. Trump’s original campaign manager, Lewandowski was fired in June 2016 after “a series of incidents that the Trump family worried had cast the candidate in a negative light.” These may have included, but were not limited to, aggressively handling a reporter and protester, reportedly calling a coworker a “fucking bitch,” and reportedly calling a staffer to yell at him as the staffer’s grandmother was having her Last Rites read. Soon, though, Trump brought Lewandowski back in the fold.
Noem stoked speculation that she’s angling to be Trump’s running mate for 2024 with an early endorsement of the indicted man for president. Trump received her endorsement onstage in North Dakota last week, where a Trump-Noem 2024 graphic reportedly appeared on a screen behind them. “I will do everything I can to help him win and save this country,” Noem said when introducing the former president.
The Daily Mail claimed it has a long list of receipts including “stays at luxury resorts where their intimacy was observed and noted.” They allegedly took private planes on donors’ dimes, and would disappear frequently. Rumors of their alleged affair surfaced briefly in 2021, via far-right conservative website American Greatness, but Noem issued a strong rebuke of the story. She said it was “total garbage and a disgusting lie,” and she was “proud of the God-fearing family” that she raised with her husband. Lawyers for Lewandowski dismissed the allegations as “rumors.”
Lewandowski became a key adviser to Noem by 2019, and they would travel frequently together. Per the Daily Mail, “In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Noem and Lewandowski became virtually inseparable companions on the Trump campaign trail. By then, their relationship was an open secret at the White House and among high-level GOP lobbyists and political consultants.”
Open the links and read the story. This whole “family values” stuff is a fraud and a hoax.
Another GOP family values scandal:
Representative Lauren Boebert was ejected from a live performance of “Beetlejuice” after patrons complained that she and a male friend were vaping and petting and disturbing everyone near them. Boebert initially denied the story but apologized for her behavior after videos were released. This opinion piece in The Colorado Sun describes the ugly details and castigates Boebert for her arrogance. A pregnant woman sitting behind Boebert asked her to stop vaping and she refused; so much for protecting the unborn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The moralizing is always horsesh!t.
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Agreed.
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Trump and Noem… What a pair that would make as President and VP of the United States. This would make for a fantastic daytime soap opera. Of course Trump would want to get rid of Lewandowski so he could have Noem all to himself. Trump would not worry or care about what Melania would think or do. And, we know all the evangelicals will praise both of them for being great upstanding Christians with high morals and ethical values.
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Lewandowski graduated from a Catholic high school.
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Aha!
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I assume you meant “aha” in reference to evangelicals
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Talk about 2-faced!
Now why does this NOT surprise me at all.
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The surprise is that the story wasn’t released by a high circulation American publication. There are people quoted as alleging that the coupling was well known, obvious at public events like CPAC.
On July 4, 2022, Noem was on Fox with this comment, “Most of Noem’s life has been about faith and family…”
No media thought exposing the mismatch in the governor’s words and actions was relevant? That’s a problem when right wing religious cram laws and policies down our throats with the help of people like Noem and Lewandowski.
The New Republic in its article, “…Illiberal Upstarts…” quotes a former DeSantis campaign aide. Readers can infer, “Catholic,” has cache for career advancement in GOP circles. I’ve documented at this blog examples of Catholic journalists’ spin. Noem’s bio includes info. about taking classes at a Benedictine college. If “Catholic” is a bona fide for GOP political office, for journalists and for political operatives, media does a disservice to democracy by omitting mention of the hypocrisy of those who advance due to right wing religion being part of their brand.
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Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota, will not lose one fascit-loving MAGA vote. If she were a Democrat, she’d be impeached and hounded until she resigned from office.
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Let’s focus on everything but this disaster clown show admin lol. Boebert vapes, shhhh we cannot find where cocaine came from white house, all media cover up Bidens crimes, FBi holding onto so many crimes they are so corrupt and will be dismantled soon enough.
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Another posting by the same deranged Trumper from New York. Different name, same sycophant.
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Oh one with the lofty brain, the packet of cocaine was found in cubbies where people store their cell phones when visiting or touring the White House. Let me repeat that: it was found in an area heavily trafficked by visitors and tourists. Assuming that this belonged to the Bidens is idiotic. If you can’t figure out why, perhaps you should get an MRI. Perhaps your brain being aloft is causing it to press against your skull and inhibiting proper brain function.
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Our perhaps your brain was Raptured, leaving you, like Trump, with nothing between your ears except a foul leakage from the missing organ made up of resentments, insecurities, and violent tendencies, and vendettas.
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I think you chose the wrong screen name.
NoBrain would be so much more accurate.
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The Republican “family values” schtick has always been a lie. They clearly don’t care about families (except for the white, rich ones), and they do not believe in values like honesty and integrity, and they despise democratic values like popular sovereignty, equality, and “liberty and justice for all.”
The “family values” lie is like the lie that tax cuts for the rich will “trickle down” and help everyone else. Not true, Nor are Republicans “better for the economy.” Another lie.
“…here has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones…Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans…The six presidents who have presided over the fastest job growth have all been Democrats, as you can see above. The four presidents who have presided over the slowest growth have all been Republicans.”
“Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation.”
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You can’t have family values and not value families. That’s it in a nutshell.
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Is this topic still applicable to the present GOP? I do not hear them criticizing philandering much since the Trump takeover. I thought having an affair was now a prerequisite for being a republican. Or at least grabbing women publically.
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On another topic, several days ago Jersey Joe reported that the platform here has messed with his interaction with it so that he cannot use his computer to comment, only his phone. I have had the reverse problem, finding it impossible to comment via phone. Anybody got any idea why?
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It’s wordpress.
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It’s Chinatown, Jake.
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OMG, Christine! Falling off my chair laughing!!!!
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It is, of course, annoying as heck that these people are so hypocritical. However, unless someone is carrying on an affair with a foreign agent or a mobster’s moll (both of which JFK did), my strong feeling is that people’s private lives are their private lives and should not be made the stuff of gossip mongering. In extreme cases, ofc, where the hypocrisy bears directly on current legislative efforts, a case can be made for outing the hypocrite. For example, George Rekers was a founding member of the Family Research Council, an extremist group that lobbies governments to restrict the rights of LGBT persons. He was also an officer of an organization that carried out extremely dangerous “Conversion Therapy” on homosexual and bisexual teens. And he was caught returning from a trip to Europe with a male escort companion who later told the press that Rekers was a homosexual and engaged him for intimate acts. This guy deserves to be outed.
But I think that the general rule should be that people private lives should remain private.
Case in point: back when Bill Clinton was outed for his affairs, I felt strongly that a) these were matters between consenting adults and b) it was not OK for Hilary and Chelsea and others in his family to be subjected to this. I could only imagine the anguish they went through during that period.
I don’t think that people should have to live in freaking Panopticon simply because they are public figures.
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Bob, I agree with you. What adults do in private should stay private.
However, Lauren Boebert was thrown out of a theater because of misbehaving in public—vaping, heavy petting and groping. Then she gave the finger to the usher who led her out. All on videotape.
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Yeah, that’s ridiculous. What an idiot. She deserves the press she’s getting. I strongly suspect that she was high as a kite.
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“I strongly suspect that she was high as a kite.”
I doubt she was high. She might have been imbibing, I don’t know, but stoned people, those high on marijuana, generally do not outrageous acts in public-they’re too stoned, at least in comparison to those who are hammered on alcohol.
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Bob-
I’m unclear about the line you are drawing.
If a politician advocates for public policy inconsistent with his/her own lifestyle, what criteria applies to media coverage?
If the policy victims are gay, yes, to coverage. If the policy victims are women, no to coverage?
Another example, seeking clarification- If a politician built his brand based on being green and he drives his hummer on private property, it’s none of the public’s business but, if he drives it on a public road, it is?
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I thought I WAS clear, Linda. IF the person is advocating for policies that are directly contradicted by his or her lifestyle, then there is an argument for outing him or her, but in general, people’s private lives should be respected as private, and people should take into account the effects of reporting on the politician’s or celebrity’s family. So, yeah, if Al Gore is campaigning for climate change legislation and spending his life on jets and heating a gazillion-square-foot home, that’s a problem. You example of the hummer makes no sense to me at all. Why would it matter if it were on private property or on a public road? And what on earth do you think I said that would give the greenlight to victimizing women? If a politician is anti-abortion AND paying for his mistresses to have abortions, that’s a problem. Obviously. And he should be outed.
But these are extreme cases. In general, we need some freaking respect for people’s private lives, on the right and the left. I’m sick of the ____damn American Puritans and Taliban and village magistrates and gossips.
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Thank you for the clarification. Hypocrites having gay sex while advancing anti-gay public (or, in his/her church) policy, should receive media scrutiny. Hypocrite Noem advancing pro-family policy which plays out as anti-woman policy should have her affair (if true) exposed as well.
Boebert’s situation differs? Opposition to drag shows, the banning of sexual content in books, etc. would make her appear to be a hypocrite but, would only deserve media scrutiny if the behavior crossed the line into public exhibitionism?
The argument about the damage to families is interesting. Noem and Lewandowski could be viewed by some as having the obligation to protect their own families. It is Democrats who buy into the the concept of a village’s responsibility to aid and protect neighbor’s children. It is a concept largely rejected by Republicans.
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The House Republicans just proposed a budget that would cut trillions from social programs like Medicaid, Medicare and SNAP (food).
I don’t know which families they actually care about.
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None, as shown by Noem’s lack of empathy for her husband’s feelings and Ted Cruz’s lack of defense for his wife when Trump disparaged her looks.
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Again, we have NO IDEA what arrangements Ms. Noem and her husband have between them. These are private matters.
I have a very good friend who is in a polyamorous relationship that has lasted, now, for some twenty years. It is an extremely happy and satisfying relationship.
I had good friends who were married, slept ONLY with people outside their marriage (not with one another), and were best friends and inseparable.
I know quite a few couples who are in open marriages.
I had a good friend who as gay and married to a lesbian wife, both of whom lived together and loved one another and slept only with same-sex partners outside their marriage.
Some cultures, historically, and some today (Japan) have widespread acceptance of prostitution as normal; a great many Japanese wives do not think of their husbands going to prostitutes as cheating.
When French president Francois Mitterand died, both his wife and his mistress attended the funeral, and they were photographed commiserating with and hugging one another.
And so on.
The United States is an absurdly Puritanical and gossipy place.
What consenting adults do is their own business.
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Noem’s campaign pledge- defend traditional marriage defined as “a special, God-given union between one man and one woman. ” She said, it is the foundation for her beliefs, policy priorities and it is the ideal she lives.
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Linda,
In Gov Norm’s mind, she had a union with one man. But it wasn’t her husband.
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Yes, and so it is OK to laugh outloud in public about her affair, I think, given this. But moralizing about how bad it is for her to have the affair, uh, no.
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I suspected that Bill and Hillary had long before come to an accommodation. It’s not cheating if it’s accepted. This might come as a shock to a lot of Americans. This country still has not thrown off its Puritan past.
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Continuing my note that is in moderation. Consider, for example, this scenario: a politician and her spouse come to an agreement to have an open marriage, provided that each spouse and his or her partners are discreet. Their children are kept in the dark about this because they are young. Then, some enterprising reporter (inquiring minds want to know) decides to out one of them. This would be an example of what I believe to be a morally unwarranted, damaging, and possibly very dangerous intrusion on the private lives of the members of this family.
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As a general rule, with the exceptions mentioned above, I think that who is screwing whom among other consenting adults is none of my business.
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This is a two edged sword. Treating the private lives of public figures can indeed harm their families, and I would agree that it is not fair to the families to treat the private decisions of public figures as fair game in all circumstances. I would further agree that the public figures holding themselves up as paragons of public virtue are asking for attentionn to be paid to their private lives.
One aspect of this issue is the vulnerability of your beliefs when you choose to tie them to behavior that, right or wrong, will be exploited by your political opponents.
Bill Clinton became legendary for his sexual exploits, losing the presidency for Al Gore because he would not control himself. If he believed anything, he sacrificed it to his libido. Kissinger famously commented that power was a potent aphrodisiac. Given that, personal behavior is of interest to those who vote for their leaders and want them to be above blackmail and embarrassment.
Thom Hartman recently commented that Lee Atwater had implied the Gary Hart had been the victim of one of his dirty tricks. I do not know much about the inside job on Hart that was supposedly the cause of his political demise, nor whether Hart was playing fast and loose with his image.
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Gore lost the presidency because he wouldn’t let Clinton campaign for him after the scandal, which was idiotic because Clinton had soaring approval ratings–better than Gore’s.
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Bill Clinton was great on the economy. He slashed the deficit. But after the Lewinsky scandal, his reputation was in tatters. And still is. The Republicans were vicious. They have hated Bill and Hillary since 1992.
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BUT, Gore was wrong to turn down Bill’s offer to hit the campaign trail for him. I remember this vividly. Bill might have had a “reputation . . . in tatters” among the cognoscenti, but his approval ratings IMMEDIATELY AFTER HE LEFT OFFICE, were great. The American people didn’t think of him as damaged goods. They loved him. Gore was foolish. His refusal to enlist Clinton’s help, given the offer and given Clinton’s breathtaking charisma and popularity EVEN AFTER THE SCANDAL, just made him look foolish, like some sort of geek. Americans held this against Gore. It was a terrible move, almost as bad as DeSantis going after Mickey Mouse and drag queens.
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From personal experience, I can testify that Bill Clinton had amazing charisma and empathy and charm.
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Atwater didn’t imply that he made up the Gary Hart scandal. He confessed to it on his deathbed.
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“personal behavior is of interest to those who vote for their leaders”
No one seemed to mind that JFK seduced his intern, dated foreign agents, shared a girlfriend with a mob boss, and routinely went out to Vegas to party down with prostitutes and the Rat Pack. Or that Kissinger was a lothario. This goes way back. Jefferson impregnated his slaves and then didn’t set free his own children by them. Married Abraham Lincoln had homosexual lovers. Grant held poker parties with prostitutes in the White House. Grover Cleveland was known as Grover the Groper. At one point, FDR and Eleanor both had their female lovers living in the White House. And so on and on. . . .
Almost all of the presidents had affairs, and mostly no one knew or cared.
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The private affairs of Presidents were never reported by the press. Everything you write about is based on what was written by historians, long after the subjects were dead.
During JFK’s life, many political people knew about his sex life, but it never appeared in the media.
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Yes, thank you, Diane. Interesting how the press protected JFK and Lyndon Johnson, and the opposition didn’t use this stuff, as they would now. No way those guys could get away with their antics today.
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The opposition didn’t use the sexual exploits because they had their own secrets.
Remember the Republican Congressman who was arrested for homosexual activity in a public restroom in DC? He said he had “a wide stance.”
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Larry Craig, who, when he wasn’t soliciting sex from men in bathrooms, was an anti-LGBT campaigner. But there are other Repugnican bigwigs that are peas in that pod, one Republican congressman caught having sex with a male Library of Congress employee in a Capitol Hill bathroom, and a state legislator in Florida who propositioned an undercover male police officer in a park bathroom.
What’s with closeted gay Republican anti-gay activists and all this sex in bathrooms?
Ewwww.
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For your amusement, Roy. It’s an amusing read.
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American media stayed away from the Noem affair until Daily Mail’s coverage compelled a few to address the elephant that had been in the room since 2019 e.g. NY Post and a few S.D. papers.
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Family values, indeed. Isn’t it clear that these conservative Christians don’t really believe what they tell voters?
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Mr. Ooze, Ted Cruz, is a poster boy for this. So easy to see that he doesn’t believe most of the crap he spews.
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Author and podcast host Sarah Kendzior is fond of pointing out that, in Trump World, they cover crime with scandal. I find this helpful as a gauge for where I ought to focus my attention.
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Great observation. Yes!
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[JOE OR JANE] Q. AMERICAN: I love my [WIFE OR HUSBAND] sooooooo much. That’s why I want [HER OR HIM] to have as little pleasurable experience as possible. And the more routine it is, the better. If I can ensure that it’s absolutely stultifying, that’s just peachy keen. That’s how I show that I really care.
Exceptional wisdom from the exceptional country where everything is just so much better ’cause ‘merika.
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Imagine that possible experience is a road that extends around the entire globe. Americans have progressed about an inch on this road from the days of the Puritan Magistrates’ Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and The Scarlet Letter. They’ve barely lost their shoe buckles. The Puritans, btw, banned buttons on clothing worn by poor people, and St. Jerome wrote that sitting in gardens was sinful because it was pleasurable.
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