'Public suicide': Trump allies write Kristi Noem's political obituary over pup's killing
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's chances of becoming Donald Trump's running mate are as dead as the dog she executed in a gravel pit -- according to the president's own allies.
The Republican governor revealed that she had gunned down her family's 14-month-old puppy Cricket for misbehaving and then dragged a smelly goat into the gravel pit to meet the same fate, saying in her forthcoming political memoir that the killings showed her willingness to take on "difficult, messy and ugly" tasks, but sources around Trump were just as horrified as everyone else, reported The Daily Beast.
“Everyone around Trump is talking about this,” said one MAGA operative.
“Haven’t seen a more public suicide than Jim Jones at Jonestown,” another Trumpworld source told the publication.
Noem graphically recounts the killings, which she said came after Cricket cheerfully ruined a pheasant hunt before gleefully slaughtering a neighbor's chickens, and a MAGA operative said the anecdote had ended her chances of becoming Trump's running mate and cost her a shot at a Cabinet position, and her role as a campaign surrogate would probably be limited going forward.
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"[Operatives] are fixated on the ads that would run if she were anywhere involved with President Trump’s campaign, regarding the dog,” the Trump operative said. “I mean, this stuff is devastating. There’s nothing more popular in politics than dogs, and she killed one — and she continues to talk about it… That’s what’s baffling and shows out-of-control judgment.”
Trumpworld typically rallies around the former president's trusted allies to steer them through a scandalous news cycle, but almost no one has spoken up to defend Noem, who has refused to apologize and insists “tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.”
“For Kristi Noem, it’s hard to even call this an unforced error, because she deliberately told this story from something she thought would be a position of strength," said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and director of public affairs at the Department of State under Trump.
Trump operatives agreed that Noem's chances of joining Trump on the Republican presidential ticket were probably "less than zero" after revealing the killings, which one Trump-aligned strategist described as “one of the worst PR handlings I’ve ever seen.”
“In America we love beer, baseball, and dogs. It’s bipartisan,” the strategist said, "And to think that Donald Trump would think you’re tough because you killed a dog? It’s the weirdest f---ing thing I’ve ever seen.”