Kristi Noem is not going to be vice president. But history could remember her as one of the most unifying politicians of her generation.
In her new autobiography — her second in two years …. who knew there was so much going on in South Dakota? — Noem tells the story of killing a 14-month-old puppy because it misbehaved on a hunting trip and subsequently killed some chickens. Noem decided the puppy was “dangerous” and that she “hated” it so she took it out to a gravel pit and shot it.
Noem thinks this story shows that she’s able to make tough decisions; most everyone else thinks it shows that she might be a sociopath with anger management issues.
To cap all this off, Noem explains how, when her children arrived home from school apparently expecting this “dangerous” animal to frolic up and lick their faces, she had to explain what happened. It’s the sort of incident you usually surface after years of therapy, not read about in your mom’s autohagiography.
Reaction was swift and unanimous across the political spectrum: Killing puppies is bad. MAGA conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer tweeted, “You cannot be VP and be a puppy killer,” while the Lincoln Project had an ad up condemning Noem within hours. The Biden campaign tweeted pictures of Biden and Harris with their dogs. In one poll, 81 percent of Americans condemned Noem’s actions. Even Breitbart trashed her.
Noem tried to do some clean-up on Sunday, releasing a statement attempting to justify her actions. “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t square with her original description of the incident, in which she claimed the puppy “whipped around to bite me.” So, the dog may have barred his teeth at her or snapped at her, but she never claims she was actually bitten.
In some ways, the worst thing about this story is that it marks her out as someone with poor judgment and as an irresponsible gun owner. Noem admits she “hated” the dog, and after shooting Cricket, she decided to kill a family goat because it smelled bad and because it “loved to chase” her children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes. Ten will get you twenty that Noem’s children were enthusiastic participants and thought goat-dodging was enormous fun.
In other words, Noem went on a rampage. The first rule of responsible gun ownership has to be, “Never pick up a gun when you’re angry.” That Noem doesn’t see that makes her lack of self-control and self-reflection even more disturbing — if that’s possible — than her shooting a misbehaving puppy.
For once, there will be some consequences for outrageous behavior. Noem is not going to be Donald Trump’s VP pick, as had long been predicted. In fact, I fully expect Trump to throw Noem under the bus with a pro-puppy rant on Truth Social, hopefully with an unintentional parody of his famous “taco bowl” tweet.
So we all owe Kristi Noem a debt of gratitude. First, for the gift of schadenfreude. Watching her blow up so spectacularly has been a rare gift. But most of all for giving us hope that, perhaps, there are some things that unite us regardless of politics. I would have liked something a little north of “killing puppies,” but I’ll take what I can get.