South Dakota's Governor Shoots Herself in the Foot in the Veepstakes
Will detailing dog-killing doom Kristi Noem's chances getting on the Trump ticket?
WASHINGTON — The political rift in America is wide and deep. Many lament the chasm cannot be traversed. As Americans debate Israel vs. Gaza, Russia vs. Ukraine and the Biden vs. Trump rematch, for a moment we’re united in revulsion by a revelation in the upcoming book by South Dakota’s governor.
You’ve probably heard that Kristi Noem, according to excerpts cited by The Guardian, admitted to fatally shooting in a gravel pit the family’s untrained Wirehired Pointer puppy, Cricket, for mischief following a bad hunting trip.
"I stopped the truck in the middle of the yard, got my gun, grabbed Cricket's leash and led her out into the pasture and down into the gravel pit," Noem writes, adding, "It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done."
She also confesses to killing a goat for the crime of being smelly and rambunctious. As the revelations triggered media outrage, Noem doubled down on what she termed her demonstrations of political incorrectness – adding equine assassination to the mix.
“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”
Until the acts of animal cruelty came to light, Noem was considered a top candidate, perhaps the front-runner, to be named Donald Trump’s running mate on this year’s Republican ticket as he makes his third consecutive run for president of the United States.
As part of her audition, Noem was said to have traveled to Texas for cosmetic dentistry, which subsequently led to a lawsuit.
Noem, according to the political gossip, was attempting to make herself look like one of Trump’s wives, in order to gain her advantage over other supposed number two aspirants, including Vivek Ramaswamy, J.D. Vance, Ben Carson and Tucker Carlson.
What sets Noem apart from that pack is she is female, an advantage – according to many political pundits – to bolster Trump with suburban women, a key voting bloc which has somewhat soured on the former president after a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing, years ago, a writer in a department store dressing room and while a jury in another case considers whether his paying of hush money to quiet a former porn star was a felonious act.
Campaign veterans, political aides and diplomats, with whom I discussed Noem since Friday’s book review, speculate that she thought it a good idea to make public her killing of domesticated mammals to demonstrate to an audience of one she’s a “tough broad,” as Trump might say. To the only man who matters she is revealed to figuratively possess brass gonads. If she had to step in as the post-Trump commander-in-chief facing Armageddon at the hands of the Russians or Chinese, Noem would not hesitate to push the nuclear button.
It is not yet clear what Trump thinks about the Kristi the Executioner, although it is generally accepted that loving dogs is a positive for a politician’s likability while killing them is not.
The opinions of the South Dakota governor in the eyes of some other Republicans are evident.
"I'm a dog lover and I am honestly horrified by the Kristi Noem excerpt. I wish I hadn't even read it. A 14-month old dog is still a puppy & can be trained. A large part of bad behavior in dogs is not having proper training from the humans responsible for them,” wrote Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was director of strategic communications in the Trump White House and now a co-host of The View.
"When I saw tweets about Kristi Noem murdering her puppy, I thought to myself, 'Damn, one of the other VP contenders' teams found some oppo,' until I realized SHE wrote about it in HER book. I'm not sure why anyone would brag about this unless they're sick and twisted," said Sarah Matthews, deputy White House press secretary in the Trump administration.
Some prominent Democrats declared Noem’s creature killings fatal to her aspirations for higher office, although in the present American political environment what was taboo a decade or more ago does not necessarily doom a candidate.
A majority of voters in the 2012 presidential campaign said it was inhumane to put a family dog in a cage on the roof of a car, as Mitt Romney had once done. During that campaign, however, more than half of those polled said it wouldn’t affect how they voted for the Republican candidate. Romney that year lost his race against the incumbent Democrat, Barack Obama, who apparently suffered no political damage for admitting eating dogmeat as a child in Indonesia.
Perhaps the most creative response to Noem’s tough gal approach was posted online by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The Democrat urged everyone to post “a picture with your dog that doesn’t involve shooting them and throwing them in a gravel pit.”
I reposted his message, which racked up a couple of million Twitter/X views, on my Mastodon social media feed where it became, not surprisingly, the most engaged post of the day for my accounts.
Imagine my amazement, while I was having breakfast this morning at the Washington Hilton, Walz walking into the hotel restaurant and sitting down at the adjacent table. I showed him what I had reposted. He smiled and shook my hand. I mused whether the Noem episode would be the Saturday Night Live cold open before quickly realizing tonight’s broadcast will be a repeat because we’re going to see this evening Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost next to President Biden on the hotel ballroom’s podium at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. Perhaps the joke writers for Jost and Biden are doing last-minute updates to their material.
I’m putting on my tuxedo in a few hours to find out.