Kristi Noem’s book No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward doesn’t come out until May 7 and it’s already the stuff of political legend. Mitt Romney’s car-roof-riding dog had his time in the sun, but Seamus did not end his owner’s career the way Cricket seems to be dashing Noem’s hope of being the Trump VP pick. As Romney himself put it, the two scandals are quite different because: “I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me.”
Incredibly, it seems Noem’s “dog killer” anecdote isn’t the only weird or inaccurate tale in the book, which was clearly intended to make Noem a more attractive potential Trump running mate. Here’s a list, which we’ll keep updated, of every self-sabotaging story the South Dakota governor inexplicably included in No Going Back.
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Noem killed her dog.
In the book Noem recalls the time she decided to haul her dog Cricket, “a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” to a gravel pit and fatally shoot her. Cricket’s crime: she had an “aggressive personality” and after Noem attempted to train her to hunt pheasant she attacked some chickens instead.
Here’s the story, per The Guardian:
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin.”
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me.” Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime.”
Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
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Noem also fatally shot her goat (eventually).
Incredibly, Noem’s horrific animal tale doesn’t end there. She writes that right after killing Cricket she decided she needed to put down her goat too, as he was “nasty and mean” because he had not been castrated. Per The Guardian:
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.
At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
Noem included her child’s bewildered reaction, for unclear reasons:
“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
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Noem says she met Kim Jong-un (but she didn’t).
In the book Noem says she met the North Korean dictator while she was serving in Congress, which did not happen. She writes, per The Dakota Scout:
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). Dealing with foreign leaders takes resolve, preparation and determination. My experiences on those many foreign trips made me a better member of Congress and a stronger governor. It allowed me to hone my deal-making skills, which play a crucial role in leadership.
Noem is not specific about when this meeting with Kim Jong-un took place, but she served on the House Armed Services Committee from 2013-2015. Multiple sources and North Korea experts told the Dakota Scout that there’s no record of this meeting taking place, and there’s no way a single junior member of Congress had a secret run-in with the dictator during this time. Even President Obama did not meet with Kim.
Noem started backtracking shortly after journalists questioned the anecdote. The Scout reports that she blamed her ghostwriter and editor for erroneously including the North Korean dictator among the world leaders she has met.
On May 5 the publisher said the story would be removed from future editions:
And on Meet the Press Noem said she is making changes, but would not say directly that she has never met the North Korean dictator.
“As soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage,” Noem said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I’ve met with many, many world leaders. I’ve traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and made some edits.”
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Noem claims she canceled a meeting with Macron (but she probably didn’t).
Noem says that while serving as governor last year she canceled a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron.
“While in Paris, I was slated to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron,” Noem writes. “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.”
This is more plausible than secretly meeting Kim Jong-un, but it appears this story may also be untrue. The Dakota Scout conferred with Macron’s office, which said he never had a meeting scheduled with the governor:
The Scout confirmed through the French president’s office that Noem did not receive a “direct invitation” from the French president. However, the office didn’t rule out the possibility that Noem – who was in Paris for a political conference – could have been scheduled to attend an event where Macron was also scheduled. Noem spoke at the conference on Friday, Nov. 10, the same day that Macron called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
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Noem thinks Nikki Haley threatened her (but she probably didn’t).
Noem claims that former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley got aggressive with her during a phone conversation in the summer of 2021. But it seems the governor may have gotten the date wrong, and nothing she recalls Haley saying sounds very threatening. Politico published this excerpt from the book:
“Hi, Governor, this is Ambassador Nikki Haley, and I just wanted to introduce myself and have a conversation. I just wanted to let you know that I follow you quite a bit. I have heard quite a bit about you, and you are doing a good job there in South Dakota. I was thinking that maybe you might like a mentor, and maybe I could be someone who could do that for you. Because you’re a governor, you’ve gone through some challenging things that I did as well. I would be more than willing to be a mentor, because you’ve never been in this type of role before.”
She went on to tell me about her life story, her résumé, and some of the challenges she faced in her legislature as governor and as ambassador to the United Nations reading daily talking points from the State Department. Once again, I recall, she offered to mentor me, as she was sure I was facing some decisions and situations I’d never seen before. …
After what seemed to me a bit of an awkward pause, she added, “I … just … also want you to know one more thing … I’ve heard a lot of really good things about you. But I also want you to know that if I hear something bad … I will be sure to let you know.”
There was a long pause.
“Um, well, thanks for that, Ambassador.”
“Let me be clear,” she added. “I’ve heard many good things about you. But when I do hear bad things, I will make sure that you know. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. We will visit soon. Goodbye.” Click.
Noem then told her assistant she thought Haley threatened her:
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I was just threatened by Nikki Haley. It was clear that she wanted me to know that there was only room for one Republican woman in the spotlight. It was weird.”
Unsurprisingly, I never received any calls or “mentoring” from her, but the message was clear. I’m the alpha female here, and you should know your place. I actually felt a little sad for her.
Haley spokesperson Chaney Denton confirmed that the former ambassador did speak to Noem, but she said her calendar showed the call took place in 2020, not 2021. And she cast doubt on the idea that Haley was issuing some kind of warning to Noem.
“Nikki has long called and written notes supporting other women when they go through challenging times,” Denton said. “She called Governor Noem in 2020 to encourage her when she was criticized for keeping her state open during Covid. How she would twist that into a threat is just plain weird.”
The Dakota Scout reports that Noem is also blaming her ghostwriter and editor for messing up the year she spoke with Haley.
This post has been updated.
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