Kristi Noem’s Book Fiasco Reminds Us That MAGA Exemptions Aren’t Transferable

Trump's acolytes will never get the same pass he does.

Over the weekend, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was on Face the Nation promoting her new book, No Going Back, and her uncomfortable exchange with host Margaret Brennan made some headlines.

The stiff questioning Noem faced shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The governor has been on the defensive ever since an early excerpt from her book revealed details of her shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in the face.

As everyone knows by now, Noem contends the dog had it coming. After Cricket proved “worthless” and “untrainable” as a hunting dog, killed a neighbor’s chickens, and tried to bite Noem, the governor took the pup out to a gravel pit and sent her on a one-way flight to happier, more forgiving hunting grounds.

“It had to be done,” Noem insists in her book.

Of course, as everyone and their sister has already argued, it in fact did not have to be done. As an owner of three rescue-dogs, who’s fostered dozens more and volunteered for multiple dog-placement organizations, I could list a number of alternatives.

No, the choice Noem made was one of personal convenience; possibly even anger (she admits she hated the dog). What’s more interesting to me is why she chose to share the story of Cricket in the first place. Most people would rather forget such a memory, but for Noem, it seemingly served as an opportunity to demonstrate her boldness and toughness… especially to Donald Trump, whose presidential running mate she clearly wants to be. Ironically (perhaps even poetically), it had the opposite affect, turning off Trump (who doesn’t even like dogs) and other high-profile MAGA allies.

The stunt proved once again that while Trump’s base won’t hold him to any moral standards (if needed, they’d unflinchingly defend him strangling a hundred puppies with a porn-actress’s thong), they’re not nearly as accommodating to his disciples in government. The same goes for political optics. When it’s Trump, they’ll reliably double-down, even if it’s something as serious as trying to overturn an election. With others, they’ll simply cut bait and move on.

So, Noem has had to do most of the clean-up work on her own, pushing a revolving door of excuses for her appalling treatment of man’s best friend. She began by defending her action on legal grounds, then she blamed the “fake news” media for having the gall to draw negative attention to the matter, then she altered her reason for killing the dog (re-framing it as a child-safety issue)… and then, during the Brennan interview, she reiterated an earlier suggestion that President Biden’s dog Commander should also be shot.

I’m guessing Noem’s next career won’t be in public relations.

But for me, the dog stuff wasn’t even the most notable part of the Brennan interview. That moment came when Brennan pressed Noem about a debunked claim in her book that she had met and sized up North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The two have in fact never met. Noem has strangely refused to say that outright, but she has conceded that the passage was an “error,” which she and her team have been blaming the governor’s ghostwriter and editor for. Basically admitting that you hadn’t read your own book is rather embarrassing, of course, yet Noem doubled-down on that assertion with Brennan. She said that as as soon as the claim about Kim Jong Un was brought to her attention, she instructed that changes be made to that passage of the book.

Only, that account from Noem was also a lie. As Brennan soon pointed out, Noem had in fact read every single word of the book, out loud and on tape, when she narrated its audio-book version. In other words, Noem knew exactly what was written about North Korea’s leader long before the publication date. And when fact-checkers identified the fiction shortly before the book’s release, Noem, whose book focuses on strong leadership and accountability, threw her ghostwriter and editor under the bus — effectively giving them the Cricket treatment.

Again, Trump can get away with this kind of thing with his base (including pretending he’d met Vladimir Putin prior to becoming president, and routinely blaming others for his backfires). But Noem can’t. She doesn’t lead the cult, so no matter how loyal she’s been to its leader (and boy, has she), she has always been entirely expendable. Now, like many other Trump faithfuls before her, her political career is very likely over.

MAGA has proven to be a good vehicle for winning Republican primaries. It also serves one well if their aim is to become a right-wing media celebrity. But unless your name is Donald Trump, no amount of idolatry, grievance, or base-pandering is going to spare you from falling hard and being abandoned the moment you’re no longer useful to the tribe.

It’s amazing more people haven’t figured this out.