President-elect Donald Trump has wasted no time in making his appointments, and it looks like South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is slated to become the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Noem, the first female governor in South Dakota history, is a rising conservative star and was once floated out there as a possible vice presidential running mate for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. That never came to be, but this appointment will only further grow her stature in the party and could very well propel her to a presidential run in 2028.
So What’s This About Kristi Noem and Dogs (and Goats for That Matter)?
One of the major recent stories about Noem centers on her 2024 memoir No Going Back. The controversy has nothing to do with her politics, mind you; instead, the furor came from a story she told in a chapter entitled “Bad Day to Be a Goat.”
In the anecdote, Noem details the account of her old dog Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehaired pointer she brought along for a pheasant hunt at the family hunting lodge. Long story short, Cricket “ruined” the hunt by essentially just being a dog, running around and having fun but scaring away the birds. Noem was so livid at the dog that she made Cricket ride loose in the back of the truck on the way home, not caring one way or another what really happened to the dog on the trip.
When Cricket allegedly killed another family’s chickens and attempted to bite Noem on the trip back, she decided to shoot the dog dead in a gravel pit. According to the governor, Cricket was a working dog that came to her family when Cricket’s previous owners determined she was too aggressive; this was more or less the final straw. On that same day, Noem also killed a goat she just flat-out didn’t like.
Kristi Noem’s Beef With Joe Biden’s Dog Commander
Commander, the Biden family dog, had a rough time at the White House, biting numerous Secret Service agents and others. Noem latched onto that story, writing in the memoir that if she became president in 2025, Noem would make sure Commander was nowhere near the White House property (essentially suggesting Commander should also be killed), and railed on Biden for failing to be held accountable for Commander’s supposedly evil deeds.
It’s certainly a stretch to equate the president’s dog’s actions with his ability to lead the nation, but when you’re the opposition, you take whatever you can get.
To Noem, who grew up on the farm, she has a different relationship with animals, and putting them down is a fact of life. What got a lot of people upset – including Donald Trump, supposedly – though was Noem’s particularly callous treatment of Cricket and what is no doubt a dubious explanation for why Cricket needed to even be put down in the first place.
But hey, Trump appears to have gotten over his disgust, and here we are, with Noem now on the verge of being tasked with keeping this country safe from all perceived threats, dog or otherwise.
