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      South Dakota governor Kristi Noem continues to be plagued by book controversies

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      As she entered a second consecutive weekend trying to manage fallout from revelations in her upcoming memoir that she shot her dog to death, South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, had conceded that she would need to correct multiple factual inaccuracies in other parts of the book.Meanwhile, a Republican fundraiser which Noem was supposed to headline had to be canceled after threats against the event staff, hotel venue and governor, according to organizers.And in one of the clearest signs yet that she has fallen out of contention to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in November’s election, as she once was, Rolling Stone published a report quoting multiple sources close to the former president who assured he was “disgusted” by her dog-killing story.Noem has faced increasingly acrimonious backlash after the Guardian in late April reported on an excerpt from her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, in which she recounts fatally shooting both a 14-month-old dog, Cricket, along with an unnamed goat.She has defended her self-described actions as being typical of the unpleasant things people who live on farms and answer the call to politics must do.But her polling numbers have plummeted as her justifications for the animal killings have not landed with the public. And since then, Noem’s memoir has only drawn more scrutiny.Experts widely doubted the veracity of an anecdote which Noem included in the book about meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and feeling underestimated by him. Her camp subsequently conceded she never met the North Korean leader.Additionally, a spokesperson for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley denied the book’s characterization of a conversation between Haley and Noem, who claimed Haley threatened her after she challenged Haley’s status as a leading woman in the Republican party.The book claims the conversation occurred when Noem first took office in 2019, but it was a year later.Whatever the case, Noem’s chief of communications, Ian Fury, told The New York Times that both errors would be corrected.“It was brought to our attention that the upcoming book No Going Back has two small errors,” Fury said to the Times. “This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor. Kim Jong-un was included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”Separately on Friday, the chairperson of Colorado’s Jefferson county Republican party said the organization canceled its annual fundraiser because Noem’s planned headlining appearance had spurred multiple threats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem was still set to headline Florida’s Brevard county Republican party fundraiser on 25 May. The county party’s chairperson defended Noem’s decision to kill Cricket, and the purchase of a ticket includes a copy of No Going Back.Rounding out the South Dakota governor’s Friday was the Rolling Stone report based on sources of the publication who recounted how Trump has expressed disgust with Noem’s killing of Cricket in closed-door meetings and telephone conversations.“Why would she do that?” Trump – who is grappling with nearly 90 felony criminal charges, among other legal problems – was quoted as saying. “What is wrong with her?”Rolling Stone added: “He has expressed bewilderment that she would have ever admitted to doing this, willingly and in her own writing, and has argued it demonstrates she has a poor grasp of ‘public relations’.”The publication also wrote that Trump’s responses were leaked to definitively eliminate Noem from vice-presidential contention.Noem is scheduled to appear on Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation and is expected to be asked about the ongoing fallout from her new book. More

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      The Wolves of K Street review: how lobbying swallowed Washington

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      Donald Trump decries the proverbial Washington swamp. Congress does next to nothing. The band plays on: lobbying remains big business. In 2023, the industry hit a $4.3bn payday. This year shows no end in sight to the trend. As the US gallops toward another election, The Wolves of K Street befits the season.Brody Mullins, a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter and Pulitzer prize winner, and his brother, Luke Mullins, a contributor at Politico, deliver a graduate seminar on how lobbying emerged and became a behemoth, an adjunct of government itself, taking its collective name from the street north of the White House where many of its biggest earners sit.Smoothly written, meticulously researched, The Wolves of K Street informs and mesmerizes.“This is a book about men – for they were almost exclusively men – who built K Street,” Brody and Luke Mullins write.They have produced a tightly stitched, 600-plus-page tome that begins as a true-crime story. The suicide of Evan Morris, a lobbyist for big pharma, takes center stage. In the opening scene of the book, at a posh Virginia golf club on a balmy evening in July 2015, Morris, 38, turns a gun on himself.The seemingly almost idyllic backdrop to his death is actually a tableau of excess, complete with $150,000 initiation fees, an abandoned Porsche, an emptied bottle of $1,500 bordeaux and a scenic sunset.Millions of corporate dollars were missing and untaxed. An anonymous letter and an FBI investigation helped ignite Morris’s untimely and violent end.“The allegations would touch off a years-long case,” the brothers Mullins write.Morris’s wife and estate settled with Genentech, his employer, the Internal Revenue Service and the commonwealth of Virginia. The government never charged anyone with a crime. Death had taken its toll.The Wolves of K Street is about way more than just one man. It is an engrossing lesson in how lunch-bucket sensibilities and the accommodation between big business and the New Deal gave way to neoliberalism, corporate activism and the decline of industrial unions.The Democratic party, to name just one major part of American life, would never be the same again. The Mullins brothers are keenly aware of the social forces that buffet and drive US politics. They recall how Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 left the party of FDR, Truman and JFK to wonder how it was no longer the political home of working-class America. Democrats wonder to this day.The Wolves of K Street traces how the US reached this point, and lobbying attained its present stature, by following “three lobbying dynasties – one Republican, two Democratic – over the critical period from the 1970s to today, when the modern lobbying industry was created, corporate interests came to power in Washington, and the nature of our economy was fundamentally changed”.The late Tommy Boggs, son of Hale Boggs, once a Democratic House majority leader, stands out as the patriarch and pioneer of Democratic lobbying. His name came to grace Patton, Boggs and Blow, a storied DC law firm now subsumed in Squire Patton Boggs, a sprawling global entity nominally based in Ohio. Evan Morris stood out as Boggs’s “prized pupil” – or apostle.Next came the Republicans: Charlie Black, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and the late Lee Atwater, who would manage the 1988 presidential campaign of George HW Bush.“[They] used their links to the Reagan revolution to erect Washington’s signature GOP house of lobbying,” the Mullins write. “Each member of the partnership had his own distinct role.”Together, they bridged the gap between corner offices and the universe of conservative activists. Furthermore, Donald Trump was a client of Black, Manafort and Stone. Stone helped boost Maryanne Trump Barry, the property magnate’s late sister, on to the federal bench.That history is why Manafort and Stone emerged as part of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016; why the pair were caught in the special counsel’s net when it came time to investigate Russia’s attempts to help Trump; why they received presidential pardons before Trump left office; and why they stand to be back for one more rodeo as Trump runs for the White House again.Tony Podesta, brother of the Democratic White House veteran John Podesta, is the keystone of the third lobbying dynasty examined by Brody and Luke Mullins, an “avant-garde political fixer [who] used his experience as a brass-knuckled liberal activist to advance the interests of Wall Street and Silicon Valley”.The paths taken by Manafort and Podesta would eventually entwine. Out of the limelight, Manafort came to represent the interests of Ukraine’s anti-Nato Party of Regions and its head, Viktor Yanukovych. In 2012, seeking to stave off sanctions, Manafort enlisted Podesta to his cause.“I used to call them the dynamic duo,” Rick Gates, Manafort’s convicted acolyte, tells the Mullins brothers.The Wolves of K Street is also newsy, disclosing for the first time Manafort’s attempt to have Yanukovych congratulate Joe Biden in summer 2012.“I am thinking of recommending a call from VY to Biden to congratulate Biden on his [re-]nomination” as vice-president to Barack Obama, Manafort emailed Gates, who forwarded the note to Podesta. The brother of Bill Clinton’s chief of staff cum Obama counselor approved.“‘Only downside is [if] biden [sic] presses him personally on politics of criminal prosecutions of his political’ opponents, Podesta responded. ‘I would say worth the risk.’”The Wolves of K Street ends on a weary note: “No matter what new obstacles have emerged, K Street has always managed to invent new ways to exercise its power over Washington,” the Mullins brothers conclude. “New fortunes to be made, new rules to be broken. New stories to be told.”One might well reach for Ecclesiastes, son of David: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
      The Wolves of K Street is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Experts dismiss Kristi Noem’s ‘dubious’ claim to have met Kim Jong-un

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      The South Dakota governor, Republican vice-presidential hopeful and self-confessed dog-killer Kristi Noem’s bizarre claim in a new book to have met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has been dismissed by experts as “dubious” and not “conceivable”.The Dakota Scout first reported Noem’s claim, which is in her forthcoming book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.The book will be published next week. Last week, the Guardian obtained a copy and reported how Noem describes killing Cricket – a 14-month-old dog she said she “hated” – after deeming her uncontrollable and a danger to people, and a goat she said was “nasty and mean”, smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid”, and bothered her children.Noem has repeatedly defended the story as illustrative of the harsh realities of farm life. But it set off a political firestorm, by most assessments dynamiting the governor’s chance of being named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.The Scout reported that Noem’s book also contains “at least two instances in which she recounts meetings with world leaders that are in dispute”.In one, Noem writes: “Through my tenure on the House armed services committee, I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders.“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”But the Scout quoted one “longtime, high-level Capitol Hill staffer” who worked on the armed services committee when Noem was on it, between 2013 and 2015, as saying: “It’s bullshit.”“That staffer was among a dozen staffers … who said they had no knowledge of the meeting, or who said Noem had never mentioned it before,” the paper said.It quoted experts saying Noem’s claim to have met with Kim, the autocratic leader of a pariah state who did not even meet with Barack Obama – the US president for the first five years of Noem’s time in the US House – was unlikely.“I don’t see any conceivable way that a single junior member of Congress without explicit escort from the US state department and military would be meeting with a leader from North Korea,” George Lopez of Notre Dame University, an expert on North Korea, told the Scout.“What would have been so critical in his bag of tricks that he would have met with an American lawmaker, this one distinctively?”Another North Korea expert, Benjamin Young of Virginia Commonwealth University, called Noem’s account of meeting Kim “dubious”.“There’s no way,” Young told the Scout. “There’s no way.”Noem also claims to have canceled a meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. She writes of being in Paris, “slated to meet” the French president.“However, the day before we were to meet he made what I considered a very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press. So, I decided to cancel. There is no place for pro-Hamas rhetoric.”Macron’s office told the Scout no direct invitation to Noem was issued, though it did say Noem and Macron might have been scheduled to attend the same event last 10 November.Noem spoke at a conference in Paris that day, the same day Macron called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.Noem’s spokesperson did not comment to the Scout before it published its story.After the story went live, the paper said, it was told: “The publisher will be addressing conflated world leaders’ names in the book before it is released.”Trump did meet Kim: in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in 2019, and in the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea later the same year. No lasting diplomatic progress was made.
      This article was amended on 3 May 2024 to correct the title of the newspaper cited. It is the Dakota Scout, not the South Dakota Scout as first reported. More

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      ‘We must not stop’: potential Trump VP Ben Carson touts national abortion ban

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      In a new book, the retired neurosurgeon, former US housing secretary and potential Trump vice-presidential pick Ben Carson calls for a national abortion ban – a posture at odds with most Americans and even Donald Trump himself.Hailing the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson US supreme court ruling that removed the federal right to abortion, Carson writes: “We must not stop there … the battle over the lives of unborn children is not yet finished. Many states have made abortion illegal because of the Dobbs decision, yet the practice continues in many more states.“What is needed is legislation that guarantees the right to life for all American citizens, including those still in the womb. Therefore, we must be boldly vocal about saving our fellow human beings through the legislative process. They are counting on us!”Carson’s book, The Perilous Fight: Overcoming Our Culture’s War on the American Family, will be published later this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.With the book, Carson follows other potential Trump running mates in seeking to sell himself to the reading and voting public as well as the former president, among them the extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; the former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard; and the South Dakota governor and self-confessed dog- and goat-killer Kristi Noem.No 2 to Trump may be a dubious prize – his vice-president, Mike Pence, ended up running for his life from Trump supporters who wanted to hang him on January 6 – but contenders continue to jostle.Recent reporting suggests Carson has slipped from the front rank. On Thursday, Bloomberg said Trump was closely considering Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, and three senators: Marco Rubio of Florida, JD Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina.But Carson, 72, remains close to Trump, having challenged him for the Republican nomination in 2016 – briefly leading the race – before becoming one of the only members of Trump’s cabinet to stay throughout his term, even after Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Carson’s hardline views on abortion are well known: during his 2016 run he ran into controversy when he likened abortion to slavery and said he wanted to see the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which safeguarded the federal right.His new book comes nearly two years after Roe was brought down by a supreme court to which Trump appointed three rightwing justices.Carson writes: “I’m grateful that in my lifetime I was able to hear these incredible words established by the supreme court of the United States: “Held, the constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”Planned Parenthood v Casey was a 1992 case that upheld Roe. Thirty years later, tilted 6-3 to the right by Trump, the court brought both rulings down.Carson continues: “The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson was a crucial correction to the error of Roe v Wade, and I am certainly grateful for that correction. However, we must not stop there.”Many observers suggest Republicans should have stopped their attacks on abortion rights before achieving their goal with the fall of Roe.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPublic opinion remains in favour of legal abortion: according to Gallup, just 13% of Americans agree with Carson that it should be banned entirely.Since Dobbs, fueled by such voter sentiment, Democrats have enjoyed electoral victories, even in Republican-run states, when campaigning on Republican threats to women’s reproductive rights. The issue has been placed front and centre of the presidential election to come by the Biden campaign.Extreme developments among the states have included the introduction of a six-week abortion ban in Florida and in Arizona the triggering (and repeal) of a brutal ban passed in 1864, before statehood and when the age of consent there was just 10.Trump has struggled to reconcile boasts about bringing down Roe with avoiding talk of a national ban.Last month, the former president said: “States will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, or in this case the law of the state.“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, some will be more conservative than others. At the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or faith.“Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.” More

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      Biden was silenced by criticism from families of troops killed in Kabul, book says. ‘Sir, are you still there?’

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      Joe Biden was stunned into silence when he was told families of US service members killed in Kabul in August 2021 said that when the bodies were returned and the president met grieving relatives, he spent too much time talking about the death of his own son, Beau.“I paused for the president to respond,” Jen Psaki, then White House press secretary, writes in a new book.“The silence that followed was a bit too long. I worried for a moment that our connection had been lost.“‘Sir, are you still there?’ I asked.”Psaki left the White House in 2022, joining MSNBC. Her book, Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House and the World, will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Biden ordered the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, after nearly 20 years of war, in April 2021. On 26 August, amid chaos in Kabul, 13 US service members and 170 Afghans were killed when a suicide bomber attacked an airport gate.On 29 August, the bodies of the Americans arrived at Dover air force base in Delaware, Biden’s home state. The president and the first lady, Jill Biden, attended.“Of all the president’s duties,” Psaki writes, “this is high on the list of most heartbreaking. For President Biden in particular, it stirred feelings of his own despair about the death of his son Joseph Biden III, aka Beau.”Beau Biden, a former attorney general of Delaware, went to Iraq with the national guard. He died of brain cancer in 2015, aged just 46.Biden has questioned whether “burn pits” at US bases in Iraq might have caused his son’s cancer, championing legislation to help affected veterans. In her book, Psaki cites World Health Organization research which says burn pit emissions contain substances “known to be carcinogenic to humans”.Psaki also notes how Biden endured the deaths in 1972 of his first wife, Neilia Biden, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car crash in which Beau and his brother Hunter were critically injured. The president “often refers to these unique and disparate, but nevertheless unbearable, experiences of grief and loss as a way to connect with others”, Psaki writes.But Biden’s visit with the grieving families at Dover stirred up significant controversy, and political attacks.Psaki describes and dismisses as “misinformation” the claim, boosted by rightwing media, that Biden looked at his watch as the transfer of the bodies went on. Citing media fact checks, the former press secretary says footage shows Biden did so only after the remains had left the airport tarmac.Complaints that Biden spoke too much about his own son were tougher to deal with, Psaki writes, particularly when the New York Times “pounced” on the story.As it was part of her job to warn Biden about “unflattering” and “negative” stories, Psaki called him, though this instance was tougher than usual because “Beau was rarely, if ever, the focus of a negative story”.“It was one thing to tell the president the media was planning to criticise his Covid response,” Psaki writes, “and quite another to say the media was planning to criticise the way he speaks about his son, who passed away tragically young.”Still, she writes, Jill Biden had previously told her: “We’ve been through a lot. And we ask that you always be honest with us. Always tell us what’s coming.”Psaki called Biden and warned him about the Times story, which would say he “referenced Beau’s death repeatedly while meeting with families of the soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan last week” and “quote a number of family members making critical comments”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen the president finally answered her, Psaki says, he did so “in a softer voice than usual.“I thought I was helping them. Hearing about how other people went through loss always helps me,” Biden said.Psaki says Biden paused again, then said: “Thanks for telling me. Anything else?”The Times story duly appeared – as did others like it.One bereaved father, Mark Schmitz, told the Times he showed the president a picture of his son, L/Cpl Jared Schmitz, who was 20, and said: “Don’t forget his name.”“But Mr Schmitz was confused by what happened next,” the Times wrote. “The president turned the conversation to his oldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 … for Mr Schmitz, another father consumed by his grief, it was ‘too much’ to bear.”“I respect anybody that lost somebody,” Schmitz said, “but it wasn’t an appropriate time.”Psaki also describes how she herself dealt with the controversy.In the White House briefing room, she told reporters: “While [Biden’s] son did not lose his life directly in combat as [those killed in Kabul did] – or directly at the hands of a terrorist, as these families did … he knows firsthand there’s nothing you can say, nothing you can convey, to ease the pain and to ease what these families are going through.”Psaki also said Biden was “deeply impacted by these family members who he met … talk[ing] about them frequently in meetings and [the] incredible service and sacrifice of their sons and daughters. That is not going to change their suffering, but I wanted to convey that still.” More

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      Kristi Noem calls dog shooting report ‘fake news’ but insists on need to kill animal

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      Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota whose chance of being Donald Trump’s presidential running mate was widely deemed over after she published a description of shooting dead a dog and a goat, claimed reports of the story were “fake news” but also that the dog in question, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, was “extremely dangerous” and deserved her fate.“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”The Guardian first reported Noem’s story of killing Cricket the dog and an unnamed, un-castrated male goat. The story is contained in Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.In the book, Noem says her description of killing a dog and a goat illustrates her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics as well as on her South Dakota farm – a defence she repeated before her Fox News interview.Noem says Cricket ruined a pheasant hunt then killed a neighbour’s chickens, all the while presenting “the picture of pure joy”.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket tried to bite her and 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 describes killing Cricket in a gravel pit, then deciding to do the same to the goat because it was “nasty and mean”, smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid”, and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and spoiling their clothes.It took two shots – separated by a walk back to her truck to fetch more shotgun shells – to kill the goat, Noem writes.Speaking to Fox News, Noem did not mention the goat.Of Cricket the dog, she said: “It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance and the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbours. She attacked me and it was a hard decision.”Repeating her claim that the story illustrated her willingness to make tough decisions, Noem claimed to have done the same through the Covid pandemic by “keeping my state open”, a stance she said invited media attacks.Figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do show South Dakota with a relatively low Covid death rate, with 71.2 deaths per 100,000 people, for a total of 776.Noem’s Fox News host, Sean Hannity, tried to compare the governor’s decision to shoot Cricket with the case of Commander, a german shepherd owned by Joe Biden who was sent away from the White House – not shot – after being found to have been involved in more than 20 incidents of biting.Hannity then asked: “You say here you said you follow the law in your book. What is the law?”Noem said: “Virtually every state has a law in place that says the animals that attack and kill livestock can be put down in situations like this.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA Guardian review of South Dakota state law found that Noem could have committed a misdemeanour, both by failing to control Cricket when she attacked and killed a neighbour’s chickens and by killing the dog later, on her own property.A spokesperson for Noem did not respond to a request for comment on that point.Noem continued: “Farmers and ranchers, they expect it. They know that once an animal like this starts killing and starts killing just because they enjoy it, that is a very dangerous animal. And that was the situation that we were dealing with.“And I’m a dog lover. I’ve trained dogs for years, I’ve been around hundreds of them, of course. And so this was a tough situation and very difficult. But that’s what happens in rural America many times.”Noem has also discussed a recent decision on her farm to put down three elderly horses – Lucy, Dunny and Tibbs – sharing pictures of the process including a horse standing in a freshly dug pit.“These weren’t just horses,” Noem told Newsmax in March. “These were family members … they raised my girls.”On Fox News on Wednesday, she said: “I hope people do read the facts of the story [about Cricket and the goat] and truly understand that I’m a mom, and at the time I had small children and a lot of small kiddos that worked around our business and people and I wanted to make sure that they were safe and that dogs that have this kind of a problem that have been to training for months and still kill for fun, they are extremely dangerous and a responsible owner does what they need to do and what the law will allow.”On the page, Noem’s story of the day she shot Cricket the dog and the unnamed goat – titled “Bad Day to be a Goat” – features the arrival of a school bus and the emergence of her daughter, Kennedy, who by the governor’s own accounting would then have been about seven years old.“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes, “and asked, ‘Hey, where’s Cricket?’” More

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      Kristi Noem ‘had a shot’ at Trump VP slot before dog-killing boast, sources say

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      Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, “had a shot” at being named Donald Trump’s presidential running mate – but blew it by boasting about shooting her dog to death, a Trump insider reportedly said.“She was already unlikely to be picked as VP but had a shot,” the New York Post quoted an unnamed Trump ally as saying.“After this, it’s just impossible.”Noem’s story of deciding to kill Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer she deemed useless for hunting and a danger to chickens, is contained in her forthcoming book.No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, will be published next month. Last week, the Guardian obtained a copy and reported the startling tale of Noem and Cricket the dog, who Noem says she “hated”.More startlingly still, Noem also describes killing – with two shotgun blasts – an unnamed, un-castrated male goat, which she deemed too smelly and unruly.On the page, Noem defends her actions as indicative of the kinds of unpleasant things people have to do on farms and in politics, too. Since the story became public, she has doubled down, saying her family recently put down three horses and claiming she was legally obliged to kill Cricket because she killed a neighbour’s chickens.According to a Guardian review, South Dakota law suggests Noem may have committed a class two misdemeanour by allowing Cricket to kill the chickens – and also may have contravened the law by killing the dog on her own property, after the attack on the chickens.A spokesperson for Noem did not comment on that contention.Having entered Congress in the hard-right Tea Party wave of 2010 and becoming governor of South Dakota in 2019, Noem has been widely seen to be a possible vice-presidential pick for Trump.In the wake of revelations about how she killed Cricket and the unnamed goat, the latter animal with two shots separated by a walk back to Noem’s truck for more shells, most pundits have pronounced such hopes to be dead.The Trump ally who spoke to the New York Post – while the former president sat on trial in the city, in his hush-money case over payments to an adult film star – said: “Trump isn’t a dog person necessarily but I think he understands that you can’t choose a puppy killer as your pick, for blatantly obvious reasons.”The Post said another source from within the former president’s camp said that though Trump “likes Kristi a lot” he was “disappointed when hearing the ‘dog’ story”.“It certainly has not enhanced her chances, but no decision has been made concerning any of the VP candidates,” the source reportedly said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther outlets reported similar disquiet.“The median reaction when we checked around Trump world was ‘WTF’,” said Semafor, “although some noted her chances were considered slim already.”Dog-killing aside, Noem’s other potential liabilities include links to a Texas cosmetic dentist and views on abortion bans – opposing exceptions for rape or incest – to the right even of Trump.“Governor Noem just keeps proving over and over that she’s a lightweight,” Semafor quoted a source “close to the Trump campaign” as saying.The Hill quoted an unnamed Trump ally as saying the story of Cricket and the goat guaranteed Noem would not be the VP pick.“Anytime you have to respond more than once to a story, it’s not good,” the source reportedly said.With Cricket and the unnamed goat in mind, the same source said that when it came to assessing Noem’s chances of a place on Trump’s ticket, “She’s DOA.” More

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      Kristi Noem’s story of killing her dog points to class two misdemeanor

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, may have committed a class two misdemeanor offence when her fated dog Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer Noem deemed “untrainable” for hunting pheasant, killed a neighbor’s chickens.Under South Dakota law, “any person owning, keeping, or harboring a dog that chases, worries, injures, or kills any poultry or domestic animal is guilty of a class two misdemeanor and is liable for damages to the owner thereof for any injury caused by the dog to any such poultry or animal.”Though Cricket’s chicken attack has made headlines in recent days, however, it was not the main subject of such reports.Instead, Noem’s startling description of her decision to kill Cricket – and also an unnamed, un-castrated and unruly goat – has pitched her into an unprecedented political storm.The story is included in Noem’s new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.The book will be released next month. Last week, the Guardian obtained a copy and reported the passage in which Noem describes killing Cricket and the goat after Cricket first ruined a pheasant hunt, then killed the chickens.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, before describing how she shot Cricket and the goat in the same gravel pit, the goat having to be shot twice, the second shotgun blast after Noem left the goat to fetch more shells from her truck.Noem says what she thought she had to do was not “pleasant”, and describes how her actions startled a construction crew and confused her young daughter.She also seems to acknowledge the possible effects of including the story in her book, writing: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”News of Noem’s tale did indeed set off a political firestorm, with observers suggesting she had irrevocably damaged her chances of being named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president who faces 88 felony charges of his own and was adjudicated a rapist but nonetheless maintains his grip on his party.Noem twice defended her account of killing Cricket and the goat, saying as she does in the book that such actions are sometimes necessary in farming, and show her willingness to do difficult things in life as well as in politics.But each defense added to her problems.In the first statement, Noem both referred to recently putting down three horses and advertised her book, promising “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”. That drew accusations of insensitivity.In her second statement, Noem said she could “understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket” but added: “The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down.“Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them” – Noem says the dog “whipped around to bite me” after killing the chickens – “I decided what I did.”In a separate section of South Dakota’s codified laws, the definition of livestock makes no mention of poultry, which would have meant the law did not apply to Noem.But asked about a South Dakota legislature definition that says livestock “means cattle, sheep, horses, mules, swine, goats, and buffalo”, omitting chickens or poultry in general, Ian Fury, Noem’s communications chief, advised the Guardian to “take a look at SDCL 40-34-1 and 40-34-2.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen the Guardian did, questions arose.Section 40-34-1 of the South Dakota codified laws – Killing of dog lawful when disturbing domestic animals – says: “It shall be lawful for any person to kill any dog found chasing, worrying, injuring, or killing poultry or domestic animals except on the premises of the owners of said dog or dogs.”Noem writes that she killed Cricket on her own property.The following section – 40-34-2, Liability of owner for damages by dog disturbing domestic animals – seems to contain greater potential legal jeopardy.It says: “Any person owning, keeping, or harboring a dog that chases, worries, injures, or kills any poultry or domestic animal is guilty of a class two misdemeanor and is liable for damages to the owner thereof.”In her book, Noem writes that she apologised to the family that owned the chickens Cricket killed, “wrote them a check for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.Asked if SDCL 40-34-2 indicated that Noem might have committed a class two misdemeanor, Fury did not immediately comment.The South Dakota laws apparently applicable to the case of Noem and Cricket were passed before the dog’s death.In her weekend statement, Noem said her story was 20 years old. That would place it in 2004, when she was in her early 30s, three years before she entered South Dakota state politics and six years before she won a seat in Congress as part of the hard-right Tea Party wave. Noem was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018.South Dakota was the last of the 50 states to make animal cruelty a felony, passing legislation in 2014. More