The possibility that she has an unregistered abattoir on her property has increased significantly.
Yesterday, National Review’s Luther Ray Abel raised the alarm about South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, most recently in the news for asking Americans to stare uncomfortably deeply into her gaping maw. (She may have been paid to do this, nobody is quite sure, and that says something right there.) Noem is a politician who — like Lauren Boebert, out in whatever district she’s now claiming to represent in Colorado — began hoisting red flags to keen-eyed observers years ago.
And now? Look, I’ve never been a betting man, but the possibility that she has an unregistered abattoir on her property has increased significantly. In her upcoming, second political memoir, No Going Back — sometimes you just gotta give the people more of what they’re crying out for — Noem reveals that, aside from being the South Dakota governor most remembered in her state for turning tail and backing down when it came time to sign a bill preventing transgender men from competing against women in high-school and collegiate sports (she later reconsidered), she’s also a cold-eyed crack shot when slaughtering poorly behaved, defenseless pets.
I’ll let Luther fill you in on the details, but apparently Governor Noem — when not hawking Texan dentistry or proudly (allegedly, of course!) cuckolding her husband with former Trump-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in front of staff and cameras — lacks the time for proper dog-training. So, when confronted with a puppy pointer named “Cricket” that just wouldn’t listen, she had to put Wee Yeller down to the tune of a shotgun blast to its tiny skull after she’d lured it into a gravel pit to play. (I’m disappointed that she didn’t bring the rest of her pets along to witness — pour encourager les autres.) By way of mitigation, she also mentions in this memoir that she similarly had to make the hard call to drag a stinky black goat out to the same gravel pit and shoot it, too — this time because, frankly, it was just too darn annoying.
I’m not sure what message she was intending to send with this. Perhaps: “You can trust me to make world-altering, life-and-death decisions — just so long as you understand that I prefer to opt for death.” The message I’m getting instead is: Let’s think seriously about a warrant to search the premises. How many other animal remains do you think we’d find there? I know she lives at the governor’s mansion now, but I’m wondering whether we’d find a subterranean charnel house on the grounds of her childhood home. (Perhaps Carcosa is real, it just turns out to be located somewhere in Watertown, S.D.)
It could be worse, I guess. One of her predecessors, Bill Janklow, wanted to be famous as the longest-serving governor of the state but ended up famous as the guy who killed a biker while speeding and running a stop sign. While Noem hasn’t killed anything human — yet! — her chances of being Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick are stone-dead with this revelation, and it’s such a bizarre one that I cannot possibly understand why she wanted to forefront it.
Honestly, I’d like to congratulate Noem’s ghostwriter and editor, who I can only assume were deep-state plants embedded within Center Street (her publisher), activated by the Biden administration to pour poison into this poor woman’s ear. “Yes, yes — we definitely need to keep the dog story, but you know what? Let’s add some pathos, I want to add a bit more emphasis on how adorable that li’l guy was, . . . but you just had to make the hard call and take him to the pit. That’ll make it all feel much more dramatic, especially when we do the goat reprise.” Well done, professional net-holders, you earned your paycheck this time — assuming it was coming from the Democratic Party. (I kid, of course: I’d fork over a tenner right now if Noem even read her latest autobiography — at least before the galleys went out and the inquiries came in.)
Can you believe it took this long? Kristi Noem turned cur and cowered away from the easiest layup in Republican political history — prevent transgender men from bodying adolescent girls all over the floor in state-sanctioned sporting events — and it wasn’t enough to kill her vice-presidential chances. She reportedly carried on an affair with Lewandowski known to all within politics for years — and it wasn’t enough to kill her vice-presidential chances. But now? Now, she takes just one lousy dog and one lousy goat out to the gravel pit and does them in execution-style, and this is what ends her aspirations? When did we become such an unforgiving people?
I’m seeing reports that Trump is moving on in his veepstakes from Noem — a pretty face clearly on professional tilt — to more-sedate and reliable options like Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota. (Or, as I typically refer to it: “the better Dakota.”) Once again, Trump has gotten the vibe shift right, and not just with his base. America is going to reject “crazy” in the next election, and if Trump wants to win it, he already has a heavy burden to carry across the finish line given the life he continues to live. He’s already wearing Kari Lake like a pair of cement shoes in Arizona, and he doesn’t need a similarly volatile striver clutching onto his neck like a lead-lined life jacket. Leave Kristi Noem to her private killing fields, which is as much as she deserves after a public career of cowardice and unwarranted ambition.