When Republican Gov. Kristi Noem proudly bragged about shooting her puppy in her new memoir, what she may have actually done was kill her chance at being Donald Trump’s VP. At least this time, it was an accident.
Ever since The Guardian first reported that the MAGA politician, and potential Trump running mate had written a gruesome account about executing her puppy into her new memoir, Noem has been lambasted online, including by several members of her own party.
Alyssa Farrah Griffith, the Trump administration’s former director of strategic communications, wrote that she was “horrified” by the story, in a post on X. “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.”
“Dogs are a gift from God. They’re a reflection of his unconditional love. Anyone who would needlessly hurt an animal because they are inconvenient needs help,” Griffith wrote in a separate post.
Meghan McCain also jumped on the South Dakota governor’s atrocious anecdote. “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc.—but not from killing a dog,” McCain wrote. “All I will distinctly think about Kristi Noem now is that she murdered a puppy who was ‘acting up’±which is obviously cruel and insane. Good luck with that VP pick lady…”
Sarah Matthews, a former Trump aide posted on X, saying she was shocked that Noem had told on herself in such an outrageous way.
“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,” Matthews wrote. “I’m not sure why anyone would brag about this unless they’re sick and twisted.”
Newsweek noted Noem’s VP chances had fallen on Polymarket, a website where people vote on such things, from 10 percent to just 3 percent. Given the backlash former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received after the revelation that he transported his dog in a carrier on the roof of his car for a 12-hour trip, Noem’s drop in popularity is hardly surprising.
Noem has also earned the ire of The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, which posted with the hashtag Justice4Cricket, the name of Noem’s dead dog.
Noem, for her part, has tried to spin her unflattering omission into a deranged example of how “real, honest, and politically incorrect” she is.
Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem speaks to Donald Trump.
Drew Angerer
In recent months, Noem has campaigned nonstop for Trump, and even openly groveled to be his vice presidential pick. Noem’s scrounging for Trump’s VP nod has coincided with her getting banned from a 14 percent of her own state, after getting the boot from four separate Lakota tribes.
In February, Noem had a private meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, after appearing at CPAC where she reminded attendees that she had been “one of the first people to endorse Donald J. Trump to be our next president.”
But with this latest controversy, and the ensuing backlash from members of her own party, Noem may as well take her VP ambition out back, and shoot it.