Anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Kristi Noem brags about killing dog and goat in her new book

Kristi Noem, the famously anti-LGBTQ+ governor of South Dakota and Republican rising star, has written about killing a dog and a goat in her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.

Noem, who’s been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential pick for Donald Trump, “offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies,” according to The Guardian,which obtained an advance copy of the book. It will go on sale May 7.

Noem once had a hunting dog named Cricket, a wirehair pointer with an “aggressive personality,” the politician wrote. When Cricket was about 14 months old, Noem took the dog along on a pheasant hunt that included older dogs, thinking their presence would help Cricket calm down. But the young dog ran wild and disrupted the hunt, then killed many of a neighbor’s chickens on the way home.

“I realized I had to put her down,” Noem wrote, saying she hated Cricket. She took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her to death. Shortly thereafter, she did the same to a “nasty and mean” male goat her family had owned.

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Noem said she included those stories to show she’ll do whatever needs to be done, no matter how hard it is. She has come in for intense criticism, however.

President Biden’s reelection campaign shared an excerpt from The Guardian’s article on X (formerly Twitter), with the comment that Noem “brags about shooting her 14-month-old puppy to death.”

The Democratic National Committee issued a statement, attributing it to “the dogs of the DNC”: “As DNC’s canine companions, we’ve heard a lot from our owners about just how extreme and dangerous Donald Trump and his far-right MAGA allies are — but nothing could prepare us for the truly disturbing and horrifying passages Kristi Noem willingly chose to put in her new book. Our message is plain and simple: If you want elected officials who don’t brag about brutally killing their pets as part of their self-promotional book tour, then listen to our owners — and vote Democrat.”

Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group that includes former Republicans, called Noem “trash” in a post on X.

In the book, Noem admitted, “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.” She also shared The Guardian’s article on X, commenting, “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

As governor, Noem has signed several anti-LGBTQ+ and otherwise regressive bills into law, including a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, restrictions on trans student athletes, and a ban on the teaching of so-called divisive concepts in public higher education. She has defended the state’s ban on almost all abortions and threated to jail pharmacists who provide abortion drugs. She founded what she said would be a national coalition to keep trans women out of women's sports, but it now appears to be defunct.