Kristi Noem suspects her dog was killed – and thus angers Trump

Kristi Noem triples.

For more than a week, South Dakota’s Republican governor has been hounded by critics from across the political spectrum. In her forthcoming book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward,” Noem describes how she shot her own 14-month-old puppy, Cricket, after Cricket killed a neighbor’s chickens, surfacing Noem’s view , dangerous for people. (Noem also described killing her “disgusting, musky” goat, a death that caused far less public outrage.)

Noem faced intense backlash from Democrats and members of her own party over her history of executing dogs. Instead of backing down, she sticks to her line – and even goes on the offensive.

Whether sane or not, Americans have a fanatical love of dogs and care about their welfare.

“Joe Biden’s dog attacked 24 Secret Service agents,” Noem said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” referring to Biden’s dog Commander, who was banned from the White House in the fall after repeatedly biting Secret Service agents. “So how many people are enough to be attacked and dangerously injured before deciding on a dog and what to do with it? … This is the issue for which the president should be held accountable.”

When “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked, “Are you saying he should be shot?” Noem reiterated, “The president should be responsible for that.”

These comments were made shortly before the Guardian reported on Monday that Noem suggested in another, previously unpublished passage in her book that she would be prepared to execute Commander herself. Reflecting on what she would do in her first term as president, she wrote, “The first thing I would do would be to make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the premises. (“Commander, give my regards to Cricket.”)”

There is something Trumpian about Noem’s decision to attack others before conceding on the issue. But it doesn’t seem to work. Whether sensible or not, Americans have a fanatical love of dogs and concern for their welfare, and Noem’s actions appear to be backfiring, including on former President Donald Trump, who was reportedly eyeing her as a vice presidential candidate.

In Noem’s original story, she says that she “hated” Cricket and felt compelled to kill him after the dog was found to be “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came into contact with,” and as a hunting dog “less than as worthless”. In defending the story after it went public, Noem claimed she tried to train the dog for months and then gave it to other trainers.

Animal behavior experts told The New York Times that nonlethal tools, including medication and other behavioral interventions, were available to Noem before euthanizing the dog. And remarkably, at 14 months old, Cricket still seemed to be growing up.

Whether or not Noem behaved ethically or sensibly, the firestorm of controversy surrounding her story underscores how dogs have long served as symbols of innocence in political rhetoric and as a way for politicians to build trust or increase distrust among the public irritate. In 1952, vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon fended off accusations of receiving inappropriate gifts by, among other things, keeping as a gift a cocker spaniel that his daughters had fallen in love with. In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was widely condemned for strapping a dog carrier with his dog Seamus inside to the roof of his station wagon while on a family vacation. During the 2020 Senate special election, Georgia Senate candidate Raphael Warnock walked a dog that wasn’t his in political ads to project a healthy image and combat racist stereotypes that black men are dangerous among white voters.

Noem’s predicament is all the more remarkable because it was self-inflicted. She had mentioned the killing of Cricket in a draft of her earlier memoirs, but was advised to delete it because she feared it would damage her politically. This time the anecdote made it to the printers, and the response to it makes it clear that those who advised her to remove it from the previous book were right.

Now, several reports based on rumors in Trump’s inner circle suggest that Noem has either lost her place on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist, that her chances of being elected are greater because of the cricket story, or that she is for other reasons The story about her dog being killed has dashed any hopes she had of getting the dog back. In any case, it’s safe to say that she did great harm to herself.

It’s all pretty strange, leading to a huge political scandal in this country. No matter how systematically cruel we are to animals in the livestock industry, or how much politicians get away with advocating for and supporting the deaths of innocent people, dogs tend to elicit a lively and protective response from Americans. And there’s something startling about the fact that Trump happily embraces Nazi-like rhetoric about immigrants but sees a story about killing a potentially dangerous dog as a political liability. But regardless of the merits, even Trump knows that there are some things you can’t get away with politically. Executing a dog is on that short list.