Kristi Noem Takes Aim at Second Target: Biden’s Dog

Mother Jones; Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA/AP, Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP

Fresh off the heels of attracting bipartisan repulsion over the admission that she killed her own dog, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Sunday suggested that President Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, should also be killed.

“Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people,” Noem told CBS’s Face the Nation. “So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?” (Commander has since been removed from the White House and relocated to an undisclosed location after biting multiple Secret Service agents.)

The new remarks come as Noem, widely considered a potential running mate for Donald Trump, continues to attract outrage over a forthcoming memoir that features the governor recounting in graphic detail an incident where she killed her 14-month-old dog, Cricket. (“I hated that dog,” she writes, according to the Guardian, which first obtained a copy of No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.) On Sunday, CBS confronted Noem about another passage featuring Noem claiming that making “sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds” would be one of the first actions she’d take should she ever make it to the White House.

MARGARET BRENNAN: In fact, at the end of the book, you say the very first thing you would do if you got to the White House that was different from Joe Biden, is you’d make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds, Commander say hello to Cricket. Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?

GOV. NOEM: Well, number one, Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog? And — 

MARGARET BRENNAN: — Well he’s not living at the White House anymore–  

GOV. NOEM: — That’s the question that the President should be held accountable to. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re saying he should be shot?

GOV. NOEM: That what’s the president should be accountable to. What is—what is the number? And I would say about Republicans criticizing me. These are the same Republicans have criticized me during COVID. They’ve criticized me when I’ve made other decisions in South Dakota to protect my state. And my state today is extremely happy and thriving. We’re doing well.

So let me repeat. At Mother Jones, we respect a wide spectrum of opinions regarding dog culture. But killing your dog and then publicly wishing other people’s dogs dead, all while gunning to be Donald Trump’s VP, seems like a risky strategy.