South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) indicated Sunday that she has not been formally vetted to potentially be former President Trump’s vice-presidential pick.
When asked on “Meet the Press” if she has received any vetting paperwork, Noem said, “The only person who knows who the vice president’s going to be is Donald Trump.”
“I haven’t received any paperwork,” she said, adding, “I’ve had conversations with the president, and I know that he is the only one who will be making the decisions on who will be his vice president.”
Trump over the weekend said he has made up his mind about who will be serve as his running mate but declined to reveal a name.
The VP selection process has appeared to ramp up in recent weeks, with several prominent Republicans receiving vetting materials. A source familiar with the matter told The Hill earlier this month that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Tim Scott (S.C.) and JD Vance (Ohio) received vetting requests.
Noem, a staunch Trump ally, was previously floated as a potential VP pick, though a series of controversies seems to have hurt those prospects.
The South Dakota governor came under sustained fire earlier this year after an excerpt from her new memoir, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” revealed how she shot Cricket, her family’s nearly 14-month-old hunting dog.
The governor said she shot the German wirehaired pointer on her property after taking it pheasant hunting. She “hated” the dog, Noem wrote, and claimed it was responsible for attacking a neighbor’s chickens and trying to bite her.
When asked if she believes the anecdote cost her a shot at the running mate slot, Noem said, “I would say that that was a story from 20 years ago about me protecting my children from a vicious animal.”
“So we’ve covered that — and any mom in those situations, when you have an animal that’s viciously killing livestock and attacking people, it’s a tough decision,” she continued. “The reason it’s in my book is because that book is filled with challenging times and hard decisions. And it’s a story, but I think many Americans will be able to read and to learn how they can get engaged with their government again.”
NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander then asked Noem a second time if the story impacted her chances at VP, to which she questioned him on if he has read the story.
“And if you read the book, a lot of what got reported was not the truth, was not the truth on the story,” she said. “So, I would encourage people to read the book and to really find out the truth on why that story is in there and read the other parts of the story about how we’re not going back to politics the way that it used to be, how Donald Trump changed politics because we’re having much more honest and genuine conversations about the challenges that people face.”
Noem also faced criticism from Native American tribes in her state after she commented earlier this year that tribal leaders benefited from drug cartels. She has since been banned from all tribal lands in South Dakota.