Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former lawyer, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s each day program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him on Threads. The opinions expressed on this commentary are his personal. Read more opinion at CNN.
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“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” goes the well-known line attributed to late President Harry Truman. And for those who do get that canine, make sure to maintain it removed from GOP South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who reportedly brags in her new book about an incident some twenty years in the past when she shot her 14-month-old puppy named Cricket as a result of the canine was “untrainable.”
Name — a top contender to be former President Donald Trump’s operating mate on this 12 months’s presidential election — reportedly writes in her book that she took the pup, a wirehaired pointer who was proving to be high-spirited and one thing of a handful, to a gravel pit and shot him.
How did this merciless and horrifying act come to mild? Noem was not confronted by an investigative reporter with a “gotcha” query, nor was she outed in a social media put up. No, in accordance with The Guardian, the South Dakota governor wrote concerning the incident herself in her e-book “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” The Guardian wrote that it obtained a replica forward of the e-book’s publication subsequent month.
Not surprisingly, the report about Noem killing the canine has led to a furor within the media and on the web. Amid the general public outcry, which got here not simply from liberals however from conservatives as well, she stoutly defended her choice to shoot the canine, writing on social media, “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.”
Noem then used the controversy to hawk her e-book, writing, “If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping, preorder ‘No Going Back’” – together with a hyperlink to order the e-book.
I discovered the passage of “No Going Back” through which Noem describes killing Cricket revolting, and I think about most individuals among the many estimated 65 million households that personal a canine (and lots of who don’t) really feel the identical means.
A 2023 Pew poll discovered that 97% of individuals with pets view them as a member of the household. That, nonetheless, apparently was not how Noem considered Cricket, writing within the e-book that she “hated” the rambunctious puppy. Noem stated she thought-about the pup “less than worthless” after she ruined a pheasant hunt by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”
Later that day, after the pooch escaped Noem’s automotive (which many people would view as a failure by the people, not the canine) Cricket killed a neighborhood farmer’s chickens after which bit Noem when she tried to restrain him. That, Noem wrote, was the final straw. As she wrote within the excerpt printed in The Guardian, “At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.” A short while later, she stated, she led Cricket to the gravel pit.
Noem went on to put in writing that her daughter, upon getting back from college, inquired as to the place the canine was: “Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who requested: “Hey, where’s Cricket?” The excerpt shared by The Guardian doesn’t embody what Noem instructed her daughter, however the GOP governor boasted that the killing of Cricket — in addition to taking pictures a goat she owned that very same day as a result of he was “nasty and mean” — was proof that she was keen to do the “difficult, messy and ugly” duties of life — and presumably politics as effectively.
Perhaps Noem included the story of taking pictures Cricket in her e-book as a result of she had learn stories of how Trump did not like the beloved pets that carry pleasure to tens of millions. As Trump’s late spouse Ivana wrote in her memoir “Raising Trump,” “Donald was not a dog fan.” She famous Trump’s hostility to her poodle, Chappy, who would “bark at him territorially.” (At least one examine does suggest that dogs are decide of character, so maybe Chappy was proper to bark!)
Trump’s antipathy to our four-legged associates might clarify why he was the primary president in 120 years to not have a pet canine within the White House. Dog-owning by our presidents is a practice that goes again to George Washington, who owned two American foxhounds. Ever since our first president, most occupants of the White House from each events have been canine homeowners, together with Abraham Lincoln, who owned a pleasant mutt named Fido, and Barack Obama, who had a pair of Portuguese water dogs, Sunny and Bo. Of course, President Joe Biden additionally has a pet canine — though Commander has not been the best-behaved canine at instances. He’s been stated to have bitten at least two dozen Secret Service agents over the years, and but nobody has urged that he deserves capital punishment for that misbehavior.
Trump was a uncommon exception in not being a canine proprietor, even telling his supporters at a 2019 rally that having a pet canine within the White House would really feel “a little phony.” Given that historical past, assuming she knew about Trump’s antipathy to dogs, perhaps Noem thought that the story of taking pictures Cricket would give her a little bit of an edge because the GOP’s obvious presidential nominee chooses his operating mate.
My personal speculation, nonetheless, is that she presumably thought that telling the story would endear her to a sure breed of heartless Republican, convincing them of her toughness. If that was Noem’s calculation, she may need made a grave miscalculation. She would possibly herself be coming to that conclusion. Writing on X on SundayNoem appeared to take a softer tone concerning the choice to place down her canine.
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“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book — No Going Back. The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned,” Noem wrote.
“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down,” she added. “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”
We’ll see if that rationalization helps to quell the general public indignation. After all, individuals of all political persuasions are rightly disgusted by cruelty to animals, even when they don’t all the time deal with their fellow people with the respect and dignity they deserve.
