South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem proudly recounts the day she decided to start killing animals.
In a new book that Krist Noem hopes to sell, the South Dakota governor describes how killing a pet 14-month-old puppy led her to kill another family pet. Noem describes the dog as "untrainable" at 14 months, so she decided to drag it to a "gravel pit" and shoot it. After killing her young and untrained puppy, Noem then decided it was time to kill the family goat and brought it to the "gravel pit" as well. After killing the goat, Noem noted there were witnesses and that perhaps the "gravel pit" was not a state-authorized pet slaughter park but a private construction supply site. It is unclear if this satisfied her bloodlust.
"I hated that dog," Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself "untrainable", "dangerous to anyone she came in contact with" and "less than worthless … as a hunting dog".
"At that moment," Noem says, "I realised I had to put her down."
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
"It was not a pleasant job," she writes, "but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done."
Incredibly, Noem's tale of slaughter is not finished.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was "nasty and mean", because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled "disgusting, musky, rancid" and "loved to chase" Noem's children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she "dragged him to a gravel pit", the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then "hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down".
The Guardian
Reading Noem's descriptions of the animals certainly does not lead me to believe she exercised the judgment I'd want from a State governor; however, Donald Trump's VP pick may benefit from bragging about killing a 14-month-old dog. Noem apparently thinks this helps her chances.
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: "I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn't tell the story here."
The Guardian
Previously: Family values zealot Kristi Noem has been cheating on her husband for years, says Daily Mail
