Kristi Noem Appears to Have Worn $60K Gold Rolex During El Salvador Prison Stunt

Online sleuths believe that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was wearing a gold Rolex watch worth nearly $60,000 when she visited a prison camp in El Salvador on Wednesday. The watch—which appeared on Noem’s wrist while she filmed her latest publicity stunt, this time in front of a cell full of Venezuelan prisoners—looks a whole lot like a Rolex Daytona, as observed by the online media outlet MeidasTouch. The variant of the luxury timepiece matching Noem’s watch sells for just under $60,000 on the site Chrono24. Commentators on social media wondered how Noem, who was until this year the governor of South Dakota, would be able to afford such a watch on a government salary. In a statement, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin criticized the Daily Beast for reporting on Noem’s fashion decisions during Women’s History Month. “The Daily Beast should stop embarrassing itself and focus on substance, not sartorial choices,” she wrote. “But since you’re so interested, then: Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best-selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.” Noem was at the Terrorism Confinement Center to send a message to America’s undocumented immigrants, whom President Donald Trump has vowed to deport en masse. “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” she said in the video. “This facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”