Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota has come under fire for planning to send 50 National Guard members to the southern border -- of TEXAS -- paid for by a billionaire to fulfill earn MAGA political points for Noem's presidential hopes.
Noem, who believes she is a presidential candidate since she ignored COVID as best she could, is now using the US military as a privately funded militia; a political prop to play to the QAnon cult by pimping out the guard to satisfy a rich person's political views.
Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC's Chuck Todd this is a very dangerous move and possibly illegal.
Todd called this a very bizarre story and said, "How is this legal? Can you use the national guard as a privately funded militia? You have oversight over this."
Rep. Smith replied, "This is unbelievably dangerous. To think that rich people can start using the U.S. military to advance their objectives independent of what the commander and chief... thinks they ought to be doing. This is unbelievably dangerous."
“The one thing we’re going to do on the Armed Services Committee is we’re going to put pressure on the Secretary of Defense and everyone else to say, ‘This should not be happening. How do we make it stop?’” Smith said.
Noem is claiming that she has the authority to make this move because she determined that doing so was in the best interest of South Dakota.
How does the immigration issue affect South Dakota, which has a population of around 886K people and that's about 1100 miles away from Gov. Abbott's border town? Noem could have asked all the wannabe right-wing "patriots" to go to the border with billionaire money, but they have no training and might actually have shot someone accidentally. Noem is being very Trumpian here. It's much like the Arizona audit in that she's clearly expecting someone higher up to stop her and then she can claim "deep state victimization."
Fifty National Guard service people are not going to protect the border, obviously. This absurd political stunt, renting out our military at the whim of a wealthy donor, is unforgivable.
