Kristi Noem's Dog Murder Story Somehow Worse Than We Knew
And other tales of the nation's most psychopathic governor.
Could the rollout of her new book-shaped object No Going Back go any worse for pigeon-brained fuckwit Kristi Noem? The governor of South Dakota kicked up a raging firestorm by including the story of the time she shot the family puppy because she was mad at it. Noem thought the story would show the public that she can make hard choices like a great leader, only to confirm the heretofore-unconfirmable rumor that Americans love their dogs. Thus, instead of being impressed by Noem’s toughness, the public’s first reaction was What the hell is wrong with this woman, is she a psychopath, should the FBI get a warrant and dig up her yard?
Things got so bad that Noem started getting snippy with interviewers and then cancelled a whole bunch of media appearances to promote the book. Instead of making a splash in the Donald Trump veep-stakes race, she found herself being mocked by Greg Gutfeld. Greg Gutfeld! Do you know how bad it has to get for a conservative for that ham-faced Neanderthal to join the pile-on?
LIKE SO!
Probably the only thing worse that could have happened is that Noem went ahead and still released the book so the public could find out that somehow the puppy murder story was actually worse than the rough sketch we already had. Luckily The Daily Beast was there to let us know what we missed.
Here is Noem after her dog Cricket ruined the pheasant hunt that led to the future governor shooting her:
On the way home, Noem says she realized she was one kennel short and decided to let Cricket ride loose in the back of her pickup truck. After all, if she “was dumb enough to jump out, then good riddance. After what she had pulled that day, I didn’t care.”
This makes the shooting sound almost like a premeditated act. The one poorly behaved dog is the one she let run around loose in the back of her pickup as she drove it because she didn’t care if it turned itself into roadkill?
Unfortunately for Noem, Cricket had enough of a self-preservation instinct to know to not leap out of the truck while it was moving at 70 mph. So once the future governor got home, she leashed the dog and dragged her across a field to the now-infamous gravel pit.
While walking back across the pasture, Noem says she passed a group of construction workers building her family’s new home. The men had “looks of shocked amazement on their faces,” and seemed afraid of Noem, she writes.
So the construction workers looked pretty much like the rest of America has for the last two weeks?
Noem then relates the story of her uncle, who was the contractor in charge of building the new house, calling her that night:
“Well, the guys said you came barreling into the yard with your truck, slammed the door, and took a gun and a dog over the hill, out of sight. They heard one shot and you came back without the dog. Then you grabbed the goat and headed back up over the hill. They heard another shot, you came back, slammed the pickup door, went back. Then they heard another shot and then you came back without the goat. They said they hurried back to work before you decided they were next!’”
The men were right to be afraid. One can imagine Noem shooting them for hanging drywall improperly.
The Daily Beast went on to relate some of the other stories that Noem apparently thought would make her look good instead of like a galactic moron, and hoooo boy. If Noem has really permanently fried her national ambitions, we can say America has dodged a bullet.
Not that dodging a bullet is that hard with Noem, unless you are Cricket the puppy or the family goat:
Noem tends to make a lot of noise about the Second Amendment and protecting gun rights, but admits to multiple firearms-related mishaps due to her own “poor shooting skills.” In October 2020, Noem posted what she “thought was a funny video about how we do social distancing in South Dakota—we go hunting,” she writes. “I was in a field and shot a pheasant… on the third attempt.”
Poor Cricket. If only she’d been a pheasant, and not a dog on a leash inches away from the barrel of Noem’s hunting rifle.
Then there was the time that Noem’s negligence almost caused a massive traffic accident, which is a weird story to include in a book that you were hoping makes you look like a competent leader. It came when she and her daughter were pulling a flatbed trailer from Tennessee back to South Dakota. Someone else had supposedly hitched the trailer to the truck for the drive, which one would think a driver might want to double-check before starting a thousand-mile drive:
“I made the mistake of not checking the hitch, but just jumped into the truck at six a.m. and hit the interstate headed out of Nashville. About ten minutes into the drive, going seventy miles per hour in eight lanes of crowded traffic, we hit a bump, and the trailer came unhitched. The heavy hitch slammed onto the asphalt, sparks flew everywhere, and the back end of the truck fishtailed almost out of control!”
Somehow Noem wrestled the truck to the side of the road before the trailer could turn into an unguided rocket bouncing around in traffic:
“Gosh, Kass, we could have killed so many people,” Noem recalls saying as she shook her head “in disbelief.”
“I know,” Kass replied, according to Noem. “Thank God we didn’t.”
Gosh! It’s true, God really does look out for babies and fools. Which you would think God-fearing folk like Kristi Noem claims to be would know already.
Then there is the time when, as a child, Noem saw her father cutting the seatbelts out of a brand-new truck:
“The government is trying to pass a law to say we’re required to wear seat belts,” Noem says her father replied. “No government is going to tell me I have to wear them. So I’m taking them out.”
As Noem tells readers, “the message was clear: the government telling us what to do was not right.”
Here’s a thought experiment: Noem’s dad gets into a bad accident while not wearing a seatbelt and permanently cripples himself so badly he can never work again. Does he turn down any federal disability he might qualify for, which of course would be paid by the taxpayers?
Personally, we think the government has a compelling interest in preventing even its dumbest citizens from maiming or killing themselves. And even if it didn’t, this would still be the humane attitude to have driving its actions. Unsurprisingly, this does not seem to have occurred to Kristi Noem.
MORE PREVIOUSLY AGAIN!
The whole “dang federal gub-mint doesn’t tell South Dakotans what to do” attitude is a theme throughout the book. At one point, Noem brags about allowing the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to proceed despite it being September of 2020 when the coronavirus was still raging out of control. (Sturgis became a virus superspreader event.) The governor is also very proud of the actions she took to maintain “freedom” during the pandemic, despite her state at one point having the third-highest mortality rate in the world.
Then there is Noem’s story of Independence Day in 2020, when Donald Trump was coming to South Dakota to celebrate the nation’s birthday at Mount Rushmore. Noem and her staff knew there would be lots of Secret Service, but were still worried about protesters. So they discussed augmenting security with the Hell’s Angels, which officially the state could not do:
With a proverbial wink and nod, “[s]omeone in the room made it clear that they knew what to do, and that was the end of the discussion,” Noem says. “... Let’s put it this way: if someone wearing a Hell’s Angels vest makes it clear they don’t have time for any roadblocks, interruptions, or noise, potential disrupters will think twice.”
We don’t know if Noem or her staff have ever seen Gimme Shelter, but the Hell’s Angels were not the good guys there, no matter how many hippies getting stabbed to death by a motorcycle gang America’s squares would have been happy to see.
There is also the requisite sucking up to Donald Trump, which might have gone better if the former president had not reportedly heard her story of shooting her dog and had the same reaction as most of America. But she tried:
“Trump’s renegade spirit had always resonated with me,” Noem writes. “It reminded me of some members of my family. As a candidate, Donald Trump did everything that the consultants had told me not to do. He did what everyone in Washington was afraid to do. He did some things I would never do. But he was running, he was working, he was doing, and he was speaking clearly.”
Donald Trump, the guy who is currently on trial in criminal court in New York, under indictment in criminal court in three other jurisdictions, owes half a billion dollars in fines over verdicts that went against him in civil cases, was reportedly disgusted by Noem’s puppy-murdering ways, and who will likely inspire worldwide street parties the day he finally shuffles off this mortal coil? Clearly a renegade to emulate.
Speaking of consultants giving advice, teportedly the editors of Noem’s first memoir a few years ago told her to leave out the story of shooting her dog because they thought it would make her sound insane. This time she ignored them. How’s that working out?
Wonkette can only continue the hilarious march through Kristi Noem’s many bloody screw-ups thanks to the generous support of our readers.
"On the way home, Noem says she realized she was one kennel short "
So... Did she somehow acquire an extra dog at her destination? Surely she would be one kennel short on the way out too? I mean, that's how _math_ works...
Justin Trudeau on twitter yesterday
"Your right to choose shouldn’t depend on your income.
So, we’re going to make contraceptives free in Canada."