Hide Your Dogs From This Lady

In April, an excerpt from the forthcoming memoir of South Dakota Gov. and (probably former) Trump veepstakes hopeful Kristi Noem (R) revealed Noem killed her puppy, Cricket. She’s since justified her decision to shoot the 14-month-old pup in a gravel pit by saying Cricket—who was apparently supposed to be a hunting dog—was hard to train, easily excitable, and once killed some chickens. Now, in a new excerpt of the memoir shared over the weekend, Noem writes that she wants President Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, to “say hello to Cricket for me.” Um…??!!!!!

“What would I do if I was president on the first day in office in 2025? Thanks for asking. I happen to have a list. The first thing I’d do is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds (‘Commander, say hello to Cricket for me’). But my dog, Foster, would sure be welcome. He comes with me to the capitol all the time and loves everyone,” Noem writes. Very cool, normal stuff!

That bloodthirsty (fur-thirsty??) snippet alone could speak for itself, but alas, in a Sunday interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Noem went out of her way to seemingly reiterate that she would, in fact, kill Biden’s dog.

“Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So, how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?” Noem said. She seems to be referencing reporting from February that the Biden family’s German shepherd bit Secret Service personnel on 24 different occasions at the White House and other locations, per CNN. Commander was removed from the White House in October. (He was simply relocated, but fret not, he is very much alive and very much still the Biden family’s dog.)

“You’re saying [Commander] should be shot?” Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Noem. “That’s what the president should be accountable to,” Noem replied. “What is the number” of times Commander should bite people, she asked, before taking a hard pivot to say that any Republican criticizing her is the “same Republicans that criticized me during covid.” OK.

Brennan to Noem: "At the very end of the book, you say the very first thing you'd do if you got to the White House is you'd make sure Biden's dog is nowhere on the grounds. 'Commander, say hello to cricket.'"

Noem responds by suggesting Commander should be put down pic.twitter.com/DNUCie5eWB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 5, 2024

This lady is just… so weird? Who is this obsessed with killing dogs other than serial killers. After the first excerpt came out, it was reported that this had effectively disqualified Noem from Trump VP contention, due to the very obvious fact that American voters across the political spectrum love dogs and loathe dog abusers. As we’ve seen with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 or Dr. Oz’s Senate race in 2022, mistreating dogs is where pretty much everyone—even Trump campaign operatives—draw the line.

Yet, here Noem is, doubling, tripling, and now, quadrupling down on just how much she wanted to kill not just her own dog, but apparently wants to kill her political enemies’ dogs, too.

In her memoir, Noem writes that she had to kill Cricket because of Cricket’s “aggressive personality.”

“I hated that dog,” she wrote, calling Cricket “untrainable,” “worthless as a hunting dog,” and “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.”

Earlier in the interview on Sunday, when Brennan asked Noem about her decision to kill Cricket, Noem responded, “I made a difficult choice. I think you’re a mother, too. And you have little kiddos. Would you make a choice between your children or a dangerous animal? And I think I would ask everybody in the country to put themselves in that situation.” Except…??? Even in Noem’s own words in her memoir, Cricket hardly sounds scary enough to warrant death by firing squad. As some have pointed out, Cricket just “gets more vicious with each re-telling” from Noem, because she knows she doesn’t have any actual moral ground to stand on to justify shooting a 14-month dog.

You can re-home dogs! You can give them to shelters! You can do many things that aren’t shooting them! And, guess what: For the sake of what meager political career might still be salvageable for you at this point, you can also shut up about killing dogs.