April 26, 2024 09:39 AM UTC

At Least She's Not Your Puppy Murdering Governor

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• by: Colorado Pols

In another edition of our long running series, “At Least They’re Not Your Legislator,” we take you to South Dakota, where…

[Holy Christ, this is a real story?]

…South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who may well end up as Donald Trump’s running mate, is a LITERAL PUPPY KILLER.

As The Washington Post reports:

South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), a reported contender to be Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, details in her forthcoming book how she once killed a family puppy and goat in the same day after she deemed the former to be “less than worthless … as a hunting dog,” according to the Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book in advance of its publication next month.

Part of the book traces the fate of Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehair pointer, which Noem was trying to train as a pheasant hunting dog. Cricket had an “aggressive personality” and, on a hunt with older dogs, went “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life,” Noem wrote.

Noem then wrote that, when she stopped to talk to a local family after the hunt, Cricket escaped from her truck and attacked the family’s chickens like “a trained assassin.”

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, according to the Guardian. She decided Cricket had proven herself “untrainable” and “dangerous” to those with whom she came in contact. “At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.”

Noem said she got her gun and led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done,” she wrote. [Pols emphasis]

Gah!

If we asked you to think of the worst possible message to use against a political candidate, how long does it take before you get to, “So-and-so hates puppies?”

In fact, it has long been a running joke in politics to use imagery of puppies to soften a candidate’s rough edges or to compare the vitriol in campaign commercials. Candidates have even brought up the idea preemptively in campaign ads — such as this infamous spot from then-Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele in Maryland:

As for Noem, the best thing you can say about her at this point is that at least she (probably) doesn’t eat puppies. And if you’re Donald Trump, how can you possibly entertain the idea of making this person your running mate now?