GOP Gov. Kristi Noem brags about killing her puppy because she knows MAGA loves Cruelty
Plus Trump despises dogs.
There’s only one thing you need to know about GOP South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem bragging about personally shooting to death her 14 month-old puppy named “Cricket” for being “untrainable” and “worthless.” She believes telling MAGA voters that she’s willing to cruelly shoot a dog to death will make them support her more. And the most alarming part is that she’s right.
Keep in mind we learned that Noem—who is a top contender to be Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024—led one of her dogs named “Cricket,” a wirehair pointer, to a gravel pit and shot her because she revealed it her new book. (Below is a photo of a young wirehair pointer.)
This wasn’t a story uncovered by a reporter or leaked by someone. Noem intentionally shared these facts with the nation in her new book because she wants us to know this—and she knew what the reaction would be.
For starters, she expected that animal rights groups would denounce her—and they did. For example, Wayne Pacelle, the president of Animal Wellness Action told NPR: "There's no rational and plausible excuse for Noem shooting a juvenile dog for normal puppy-like behavior." And Colleen O'Brien, senior vice president at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), denounced the governor for "punishing her by deciding to personally blow her brains out rather than attempting to train her or find a more responsible guardian."
But Noem also gets that to MAGA, any group that advocates for animals—or decency, for that matter—would be seen as some type of woke organization. That is the backlash she wanted.
Plus there is something far more sinister. Noem gets that MAGA loves cruelty. And what is crueler than killing a puppy to show how tough you are to the MAGA scum. (Obviously, if Noem was truly unable to train the dog, she could’ve hired a professional to help her or put this pure breed, expensive dog up for adoption—shooting the dog was about something else.)
That is why after The Guardian published the excerpt of her book of shooting “Cricket,” she didn’t claim it was some type of mistake by the publisher. Instead, she vocally defended her actions on social media, writing, “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.” She then used the media attention in a Trump like fashion to peddle her book, writing, “If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping, preorder ‘No Going Back,’” --which included a link to order the book.
Reading the excerpt of the book of Noem killing “Cricket” is revolting—and that’s likely true as well for the estimated 65 million households that have a dog and especially given that a 2023 Pew poll found 97% of people with pets view them as a member of the family. But not to Noem who wrote of how she “hated” “Cricket” and called her “less than worthless” because she had ruined a pheasant hunt by “going out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”
Later that day, after the dog escaped Noem’s car—which would be a failure of Noem to properly lock—"Cricket” killed a local farmer’s chicken and threatened to bite her. As Noem wrote, “At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.” A short time later, Noem wrote of leading Cricket to the gravel pit where she shot the 14-month-old dog to death.
To make matters worse, Noem then added that her daughter retuned from school inquiring as to where the dog was: “Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
The excerpt shared by The Guardian does not include what Noem told her daughter, but the GOP governor boasted that the killing of Cricket—as well as shooting a goat she owned later that same day because he was “nasty and mean” -- was proof that she was willing to do the “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics and in life when needed.
The title of Noem’s book, “No Going Back,” is a great way to look at today’s MAGA dominated GOP. The old Republican Party is dead. After all, even GOP Vice President Dick Cheney expressed regret when in 2006 while quail-hunting, he accidentally shot his friend 78-year-old Harry Whittington. Three days after the accident, Cheney told the media that shooting his friend—who survived--was “one of the worst days of my life.” Flash forward to 2024 and a potential GOP vice presidential candidate is bragging about shooting her dog to death to show Republican voters she is tough enough to potentially be President one day.
Noem perhaps included the tale of shooting her dog because she knew Trump does not like these four-legged friends that bring joy to millions. As Trump’s late wife Ivana wrote in her memoir, “Donald was not a dog fan.” She noted Trump’s hostility to her poodle, “Chappy,” who would “bark at him territorially.” (Studies do note that dogs are a good judge of character so Chappy was right to bark!)
That explains why Trump was the first president in 120 years who did not have dog as a pet in the White House, a tradition started by George Washington with his two American foxhounds. Democratic and Republican Presidents that followed loved their dogs from Abraham Lincoln’s “Fido” to Barack Obama’s “Sunny” and “Bo.” And of course President Biden has a pet dog—although “Commander” has not been the best behaved at times. But Trump was the exception, even telling his supporters at a 2019 rally that having a pet dog in the White House would feel "a little phony.”
Given that history, it’s possible Noem thought that the story of shooting “Cricket” would make Trump more likely to choose her to be his running mate because of how she treated an animal he despises.
But it’s more likely because she wanted to impress Trump by making it clear there’s no bottom to what she is capable of doing to help him. She knows Trump doesn’t want a Mike Pence type again as a running mate who will block Trump’s next coup attempt or object if Trump wants to stay in power beyond 2028. After all, if you will brag about leading a 14-month-old dog to a gravel pit, taking out your gun and shooting the dog point blank, there really is no atrocity you aren’t cable of. And that is exactly the quality Trump most wants in his next vice President.
It's not a coincidence that one of the earliest signs of psychopathy is animal cruelty.
The dog is us. I hope people realize that.