South Dakota Governor and potential Donald Trump running mate Kristi Noem is facing backlash from prominent names within the former president’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement after reports emerged of her shooting her “untrainable” dog.
British newspaper The Guardian published an excerpt of Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward on Friday in which the governor shared an account of shooting the dog, which she wrote had an “aggressive personality.”
Noem wrote that she brought Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs to help it learn how to behave. However on the hunt, Cricket went “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life,” the governor wrote, who added that she used an electronic collar to attempt to bring Cricket under control, which didn’t work.
On the way home, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked a family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.” This made the chickens’ owner cry and Noem paid them while also helping clean the mess the dog had made. She added that when she grabbed Cricket, the dog “whipped around to bite me.”
“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”
“It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done,” she wrote, adding that she shot Cricket after leading it to a gravel pit.
The governor also wrote that she “hated that dog,” describing it as “untrainable” and “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.”
Newsweek has not obtained a copy of the book and has been unable to verify the reported passage. Newsweek reached out to Noem’s office via her website for further comment Saturday afternoon. This story will be updated with any provided statements.
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In response to the excerpt, far-right activist Laura Loomer posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, “Wow. No coming back from this. This is so heartless. She killed a puppy? As a dog lover, that is just too much for me. You don’t kill a dog because it’s ‘useless.’ She could have found a loving home for the dog. My dogs are the loves of my life. I would be devastated without them.”
The anonymous social media account @catturd2, which has amassed more than 2 million followers for its MAGA posts, posted, “There’s nothing you can say to justify shooting an 18-month-old puppy in the face and killing it. NOTHING! I don’t give AF what it did.
In a separate post, the account added: “Just so you know … If you find a dog ‘untrainable’ and you feel like the only answer is to shoot it in cold blood – I’ll gladly take the dog to live on the Catturd ranch until I can find – a loving home. All my abused rescues are so hard to take care of at first but if you give them maximum love, eventually, they’ll turn into the most beautiful, loving gifts you’ll ever know.”
Matthew Nichol, a MAGA account with over 38,000 followers, posted to X, “I do not care if she is MAGA. Kristi Noem is done in my mind. How can anybody shoot a healthy dog. I am so disappointed. Any thoughts?”
In a re-post of The Guardian‘s article, Noem posted the following on X Friday morning: “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.”
Noem, a close ally of Trump, is widely speculated to be a potential vice president pick for him. Trump previously indicated that the Republican governor was a possible choice in an interview with Fox News in February and said that Noem and six others were being considered as his potential running mate.
Noem, however, also told Fox News in February that she and Trump have “never had that conversation” about her potentially being his 2024 running mate.
Polymarket, an online prediction platform where users can place “yes” or “no” bets on the likelihood of world events, is currently giving Noem a 3 percent chance of potentially being the next Republican vice president after the report emerged.
On Friday, Noem was given a 5 percent chance of being selected as Trump’s next running mate, down from 10 percent the previous day. On March 25, Polymarket was listing Noem as the second favorite with 9 percent chance, behind South Carolina Senator Tim Scott on 22 percent.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.