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Homeland Security Flack Tricia McLaughlin Set To Leave Trump Administration

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and vociferous defender of President Donald Trump, is set to leave her position as soon as next week.

Multiple outlets reported McLaughlin’s decision on Tuesday, just as criticism of Trump’s DHS chief, Kristi Noem, has been heating up.

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A source familiar with her plans told HuffPost that McLaughlin’s exit has been in the works since December, though, and was delayed in the aftermath of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

McLaughlin has stuck like glue to the administration line that Trump is helping to keep Americans safe by sending armed immigration officers to raid communities around the country, even though relatively few of the people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been found to have violent criminal backgrounds.

Good and Pretti were both shot dead last month by federal agents while they were observing immigration operations — she in her car and he on a Minneapolis street. Their deaths, just weeks apart, sparked a furious response from Americans who have increasingly soured on Trump’s hardline immigration push.

McLaughlin was among the Trump officials who insisted that Good had been attempting to use her vehicle as a “weapon” to attack ICE.

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In the wake of the Pretti shooting, she swiftly put out a statement claiming that he had “violently resisted” officers who were attempting to disarm him, although video from the incident would disprove that version of events. She then defended Noem’s use of the term “domestic terrorist” to describe Pretti, a nurse with a legal gun permit.

Through her prolific social media presence, McLaughlin maintained that Trump’s political opponents were exaggerating the effects of the raids on communities.

On Tuesday, she also came to the defense of Noem after she was accused of putting “stress” on the U.S. Coast Guard by redirecting their resources away from search-and-rescue operations in order to support Trump’s immigration push. (DHS denied the report.)

McLaughlin came to the Trump administration by way of businessman Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign; previously, she worked to reelect Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R).

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