Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. One remaining question is the Republican vice presidential nomination. One contender just took a serious hit. Trump hates dogs, but millions of voters love them, and they will not approve of this news about Kristi Noem.
Conservative pundits have condemned the South Dakota governor and possible Trump running mate Kristi Noem, amid widespread horror over her admission in a new book that she killed both an “untrainable” dog and an unruly goat during a single day in hunting season.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump White House staffer turned critic, said: “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 and can be trained. A large part of bad behaviour in dogs is not having proper training from humans.
“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.”
The Guardian revealed Noem’s story, which is contained in a book out next month. In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem describes her frustrations with Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbouring family’s chickens.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, saying Cricket was “untrainable … dangerous” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Noem describes taking Cricket to a gravel pit on her farm and shooting her. Remarkably, Noem then describes how she also chose to kill an unruly, unnamed, un-castrated goat, first botching the job then finishing the animal off with a third shotgun shell.
The news roiled the race to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, of whom Noem is an ardent supporter.
Sarah Matthews, another Trump aide turned opponent, said: “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.”
