Two of the first words out of Kristi Noem’s mouth when asked Wednesday on Fox News to justify her strange decision to kill her puppy and her goat by shooting them in a gravel pit were “fake news.”
In the fashion of a typical Trump ally, Noem blamed the media for simply reporting on what she reportedly wrote in her forthcoming book.
“Well, Sean, you know how the fake news works. 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,” said Noem, who had been considered a potential Trump running mate until her admission.
Noem then urged viewers on Sean Hannity’s show to still buy her book to “find out the truth.”
“The truth of this story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy,” Noem claimed, despite having described the German Wirehaired Pointer in her book as “about 14 months old.” According to Gundog Journal, that breed doesn’t “reach full maturity until around 2 years of age.”
Yet Noem maintained that she did the right thing because the dog was “extremely dangerous”—and her choice actually shows how she can make tough decisions like “keeping my state open” during COVID-19. (In November 2020, Washington Post data showed South Dakota with the highest per capita death rate nationally.)
“I had a choice between keeping my small children and other people safe, or a dangerous animal, and I chose the safety of my children,” Noem said, as if giving the dog to a shelter simply wasn’t an option.
Noem then resorted to saying that what she did was “legal,” while insisting she really is “a dog lover.”
For his part, Hannity’s questioning of the governor was tame, introducing the segment by saying that she “had to” kill her dog, rather than that being a choice she willingly made.
