What a weekend for the Republican governor of South Dakota and one-woman animal-killing spree Kristi Noem. No, not because she got to kill anything. So far as we know, anyway. We suppose she could have spent the weekend throwing a litter of newborn kittens against the wall of her barn.
No, it was quite the weekend for Noem because the fallout around her book-shaped audition to be Donald Trump’s vice president continued to cause headaches for her and choking laughter for pretty much everyone else.
CNN got its hands on an advance copy of the book, No Going Back, and discovered something about the anecdote released last week in which Noem reminisced about shooting her dog, Cricket, to death, because that’s just the kind of hard decision that a South Dakota rancher has to make.
It turns out the dog murder anecdote also contains a couple of shots at Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, the hound who earned a bad reputation because he kept biting Secret Service agents. Biden did not have the dog shot, which to the rest of America sounds compassionate, but to a sociopath like Noem sounds like weakness:
“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.
Maybe Foster is a well-behaved dog because when he misbehaves, his master points out the window towards the gravel pit and tells him to shape up or she’ll do to him what he did to Cricket. Are even Noem’s grandchildren terrified of getting Cricketed? You kids mind your Meemaw and do what she says, or she’ll take you to the gravel pit!
Noem appeared on CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday to try and defend herself by hollering whatabout Commander HEEENNNNNGH? Thereby proving once again that whataboutism is one of the more regrettable tics infesting the national discourse:
“Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people,” she told her interviewer, Margaret Brennan. “So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog?”
Commander is not on the White House grounds now. The Bidens banished him last year after those biting incidents. So, 24 is the number, apparently.
What the Bidens did not do was drag Commander to a gravel pit somewhere and shoot him and then brag about this being an example of Joe Biden making the tough decisions required of a POTUS, because a) Joe Biden is not an insecure try-hard who has to inflate his resume for a national audience, and b) Joe Biden is not a psychopath.
Noem also demanded that Joe Biden be “held accountable” for Commander’s actions, which indicates Noem has a very skewed idea of the types of decisions for which American voters hold a president accountable. There are a lot of reasons why people will not — or at least say in May that they will not — vote for Joe Biden in November. We doubt “because his dog bit a bunch of Secret Service agents before he gave up and sent the dog to live elsewhere” is on the list.
Here is Noem getting all defensive about her bloodlust, around the 13:13 mark, after “Face The Nation” host Margaret Brennan asks her if she’s saying this garbage to look tough. (The answer is yes, Margaret Brennan, because Kristi Noem is, again, a whiny and insecure try-hard who wants to lead a party full of whiny and insecure try-hards.)
Kristi Noem is discovering that there is a very fine line between looking tough-minded and looking like a hateful asshole who would stand over the body of a dog she just shot and yodel in triumph.
Noem’s publisher also announced that future editions of her campaign pamphlet of an autobiography would remove a reference to her having once met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un when she was in Congress, since this meeting did not actually happen. There is no word on which Asian leader Noem did meet, if she met one at all, but we guess they all look alike to Kristi Noem so who cares.
We can’t wait for the plank in the platform of her inevitable presidential campaign when she promises to install a gravel pit at the White House that she can drag any recalcitrant world leader to if he doesn’t do the bidding of the United States. You’re on notice, Kim Jong-un!
Unlike Kristi Noem’s pets, Wonkette expects to live a long life if you can help.
However unruly your dog may be, if your first and only considered solution to shooting the dog, then I have to think YOU WANTED TO SHOOT YOUR DOG. You did what you wanted, lady. That's not making a "tough decision." That's not "leadership." That's doing whatever you want.
I myself have made the tough decision to lay around all day watching TV and eating sandwich creme cookies. It's hard, but being a leader is a lonely proposition.
Commander biting Secret Service agents never bothered me because I just assumed it was the trumpy ones. Actually, it’s the number of trumpy Secret Service agents that bothers me.