USA TODAY
Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota and possible running mate of Donald Trump, caused a stir in the United States by revealing that she shot her dog for being “untamable” and a goat for smelling bad.
In her memoir, obtained by The Guardian before her publication, the Republican writes that she shot and killed Cricket, just over a year old, because she was “indomitable.”
“She HATED that bitch,” she admits. She reproaches him for ruining a pheasant hunt because she was overexcited and blames him for the death of some chickens.
According to the governor, shooting him was her only solution.
“It wasn't pleasant, but it had to be done. And when I finished, I realized that there was another unpleasant job to do,” she adds.
She had one goat left to kill, she explains without flinching. She was “nasty” and smelled bad (“stale” and “disgusting”), so she suffered the same fate.
- Pit -
In the midst of the campaign for the November presidential elections, the news caused an avalanche of reactions on social networks and on television talk shows.
The president's team, Democrat Joe Biden, took the opportunity to publish a photo of the governor with Trump.
“Kristi Noem brags about shooting her puppy,” the team proclaimed on the X social network.
The Lincoln Project, a coalition of Republicans opposed to Trump, recalled that the latter was “the first president” in several decades “not to have a dog in the White House.” Almost a sacrilege in the United States.
The Democratic governors of Minnesota and Michigan, Tim Walz and Gretchen Whitmer, called for reaction.
“Post a photo with your dog that does not involve killing it and throwing it into a pit,” they wrote along with photographs of them with animals.
- “Cruella” -
On the television show The View, the presenters did not mince their words.
“The only woman I know who kills dogs is Cruella, and she is a baddie from a Disney movie,” one said.
“Sometimes dogs are like your children. They are your fur babies,” another said.
Noem says in the book that she killed Cricket to show that she is prepared, in politics as in life, to do what is necessary, even if it is “ugly” and “difficult.”
On Sunday, she wrote on the social network
“As I explained in the book, it wasn't easy. But often, what is easy is not the right thing to do,” she added.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate defeated by Trump in 2016, published on X a comment that she had written in 2021: “Don't vote for someone you wouldn't trust your dog to.”
“It's still relevant,” she stressed.
