Kristi Noem Isn't *Just* a Puppy Killer

The South Dakota governor's pooch-murdering bravado might be a carefully crafted piece of voter-focused sociopathy.

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As you may have heard by now, South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem murdered a puppy — a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named “Cricket,” to be exact. She led Cricket to a gravel pit near her house and shot the dog to death. Then, intoxicated by the heady thrill of gun violence, Noem gathered up a goat from her family farm, led it down to that exact same gravel pit, and proceeded to shoot it to death, too.

This is not conjecture or baseless partisan mudslinging. This is something Noem publicly admits — even brags about — in her unfortunately titled forthcoming memoir No Going Back, a copy of which The Guardian obtained late last week. The point of her animal executions, she claims, is to show that the world can be “difficult, messy, and ugly.” So by killing her puppy and that goat, both of which were allegedly a little too rambunctious for her liking (uh, yeah, it’s a puppy and a goat), Noem was simply demonstrating that she’s tough enough to meet life’s uncomfortable moments head on…and then shoot those moments to death. After people started freaking out that she’d shortened “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” by several verses, Noem pointed out that she also killed a bunch of horses just a few weeks back. Can’t say she’s not committed to the bit.

The thing is, instead of appealing to some vague sense of Americana-tinged can-do-ness (and the presumptive electoral boons thereof) Noem’s saga of puppy murder has activated and animated a very different (??) segment of the voting populace: Bigots.