For South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, much of the 2024 campaign cycle has turned out to be a case study in what not to do to rise into potential vice presidential contention.
That includes the latest hiccup, with the second-term South Dakota governor – once considered a top potential running mate who has since fallen off former President Donald Trump’s shortlist, according to multiple Republicans with knowledge of that list – finding herself in an unwanted spotlight over questions about actions she describes in her upcoming book: “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.”
Noem’s crisis hasn’t affected her standing on Trump’s vice presidential candidate shortlist – sources said she had fallen off that list long before that – but it has confirmed to skeptics in Trump’s orbit that she shouldn’t be in consideration and won’t be anytime soon.
Noem’s book launch has become a problem for her for multiple reasons. First, there was Noem’s description of her decision to kill a 14-month-old wirehair pointer, named Cricket, who was not displaying the signs of an ideal hunting dog. The governor wrote that the dog was “untrainable,” according to excerpts first reported by The Guardian. She also described shooting a goat in the book.
Noem has argued that those anecdotes were meant to show how capable she is of doing some of the more gruesome jobs in life when necessary.
But the Cricket episode in particular instead resulted in days of Noem having to publicly defend the decision to put the dog down. A bipartisan group of members of Congress set up a Congressional Dog Lovers Caucus in a not so subtle dig to the South Dakota governor.
Some Republicans came to her defense, like South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, who…
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