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Kristi Noem is in a troublesome spot. The finest strategy to keep away from having to inform Americans why you must nonetheless be on Donald Trump’s VP short list regardless of killing your canine is to not take your 14-month-old puppy to a gravel pit and fatally shoot it. The second finest method is to not inform that story in your individual guide. Unfortunately, neither of these choices is available to Noem, so she needed to go along with a 3rd choice: clarify your self in an extremely sympathetic interview with Sean Hannity.
In a method, the South Dakota governor’s Wednesday-night look on Fox News couldn’t have gone higher. Hannity introduced up Joe Biden’s bite-y dog twice and got here near suggesting that the president ought to have put down Commander. He ended the interview by not solely encouraging viewers to buy No Going Back, however explaining how to take action. “The book is available, by the way, online. You go to Amazon.com,” he stated.
Best of all, Hannity provided no pushback as Noem hit her speaking factors. The governor argued that the “dog killer” debacle is all of the “fake news” media’s fault:
“Well, Sean, you know how the fake news works. They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it, and that’s what happened in this case.”
She claimed that 14-month-old Cricket wasn’t a “puppy”:
“Because the truth of this story is that this was a working dog, and it was not a puppy.”
Noem painted Cricket as a monster who loved killing:
“It was a dog that was extremely dangerous; it had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance. And the day she was put down was the day she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors’. She attacked me. And it was a hard decision.
Farmers and ranchers, they expect it. They know that once an animal like this starts killing, and starts killing just because they enjoy it, that is a very dangerous animal.”
And Noem introduced herself as a mama grizzly who needed to defend her youngsters (and the “small kiddos” who worked at her business?):
“I do hope people read the facts of the story and truly understand that I’m a mom, and at the time I had small children and a lot of small kiddos that worked around our business and people, and I wanted to make sure that they were safe. And that dogs that have this kind of a problem, that have been to training for months and still kill for fun, they are extremely dangerous, and a responsible owner does what they need to do and what the law will allow.”
Despite this capably delivered, MAGA-y spin, the interview most likely gained’t save Noem, as a result of all she actually did was double down on the unique downside with the Cricket story. If Noem’s guide included a narrative about her wrestling with the choice to place down a cherished however harmful searching canine, then tearfully concluding that placing her down herself was essentially the most humane choice, it might’ve been controversial however perhaps not profession ending.
Instead, within the guide, Noem reportedly emphasizes that Cricket was young and “having the time of her life.” She remarks, “I hated that dog” and calls Cricket “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” Then she make the story even weirder by mentioning a botched try and put down her goat, and her confused daughter asking, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
Noem instructed Hannity “it was a hard decision” and claimed “I’m a dog lover.” But her broader level continues to be that Cricket was an actual jerk and he or she wasn’t that torn up about taking out this canine super-predator. It appears Noem instructed a narrative to sound robust and folksy and wound up MAGA girlboss-ing too near the solar.
