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https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/05/opinion/kri...Bryon Noem’s cross-dressing isn’t a problem. Kristi Noem’s hypocrisy is.
The former Cabinet secretary wants the kind of compassion she never showed to those brutalized and killed on her watchBryon Noem is a cross-dresser. That’s no one’s business but his own.
But Noem is married to Kristi Noem, the recently fired Homeland Security secretary who continues to serve in the most ruthlessly hostile administration ever when it comes to the LGBTQ community and gender nonconformists.
On Tuesday, the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published leaked photos of Bryon Noem dressed in hot pink shorts and what appeared to be balloons as fake breasts under a T-shirt in selfies that he reportedly posted under a pseudonym to online adult sites.
In its investigation, the paper said that Bryon Noem had spent at least $25,000 in chat rooms with models on the “bimbofication” scene, which fetishizes women with bodies cartoonishly enhanced through surgery and silicone injections.
(It was also the Daily Mail that in 2024 dredged up news of an affair that Doug Emhoff, husband of then vice president Kamala Harris, had years earlier during his first marriage. That became a Trump campaign talking point during the presidential campaign to somehow smear Harris.)
Kristi Noem is now a special envoy to Shield of the Americas, which sounds like something plucked from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a statement to the New York Post, a spokesperson said Noem is “devastated” over the revelations. “The family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time.”
What Noem wants is the kind of compassion she denied to others when, as DHS secretary, she sent masked federal immigration agents, President Trump’s storm troopers, into American neighborhoods with impunity. What she wants is privacy to deal with a private matter that should be of no concern to anyone outside her family.
But her husband’s cross-dressing isn’t a problem. Noem’s hypocrisy is.
That hypocrisy flows through the administration that Noem continues to serve. Asked about the revelations about Noem’s husband, President Trump was surprised that Noem, by not denying the report, essentially backed its veracity.
“They confirmed it? Wow, well, I feel badly for the family if that’s the case, that’s too bad,” Trump said during an interview with the Daily Mail. “I haven’t seen anything. I don’t know anything about it. That’s too bad, but I just know nothing about it.”
Aside from Trump’s multiple denials that he knew about coverage of the Daily Mail’s investigation, what’s noteworthy about his comments is that they express a level of empathy to which Trump is usually immune.
On social media, which runs on schadenfreude, empathy for the Noems seems to be in short supply.
Some posts compared Bryon Noem to “Mrs. Doubtfire,” the cross-dressing character played by Robin Williams in the 1993 comedy. Many Instagram reels show men imitating Bryon Noem’s fetish drag as their shocked wives catch them in the act.
But there’s more here than cheap laughs. There are reminders that Noem, even before she joined the Trump administration, expressed anti-LGBTQ sentiments. As South Dakota’s governor in 2022, Noem said, “I’ve never supported gay marriage as far as the legality of it in our state. For me, a lot of my faith has to do with that and the legal documentation of that.”
Only Bryon Noem can identify his own sexual orientation. But his wife is part of an administration that has made Americans’ private business — about health care choices, bodily autonomy, and living an authentic life — the government’s business, especially for trans and nonbinary people. Instead of empathy and legal protections, they’ve gotten executive orders and court challenges designed to criminalize and legislate them out of existence.
If Bryon Noem was a teacher in South Dakota and photos like those The Daily Mail published had been leaked, a conservative school board probably would have voted for him to be fired. That’s what happened in 2024 to a principal in Oklahoma who was forced out of his job because he had a side gig as a drag performer.
Had Noem been a Democrat, Republicans would probably be demanding pointless investigations, if not her resignation from the administration.
But since Bryon Noem is the husband of a Trump loyalist, Republicans are mostly ignoring the news about him. On its face, there’s nothing wrong with that — his actions broke no laws. But his wife does not deserve the grace that, as a former governor and DHS secretary, she never gave to those who were disparaged, brutalized, or killed on her watch. —Renée Graham, Boston Globe
