The ancient historian Plutarch warned:

“And the most glorious episodes do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.

“Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles.”

Those needing a modern demonstration of this truth need only turn to the story now igniting the Internet—especially X: South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s proud confession of shooting her 14-month-old wirehair pointer named “Cricket.”

Kristi Noem

The confession (“I hated that dog”) comes in her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, which will be published in May.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, obtained an advance copy and published excerpts from it. And that’s when the firestorm erupted.

Cricket’s “crimes”: Being disobedient, being a poor hunter during a pheasant hunting trip and later attacking and killing a neighbor’s chickens.

According to Noem, she hoped to calm the young dog down. But Cricket had other ideas, ruining the hunt and “going out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.” 

Cricket

Noem called Cricket, which didn’t lead to the desired response. So she tried an electronic “shock” collar. That didn’t work, either.

Then, on the way home after the hunt, Noem stopped to talk to a local family. And that was when Cricket became the hunter Noem wanted her to be.

She leaped out of Noem’s truck and attacked the farmer’s chickens—“grabbing one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

For Noem, Cricket—who didn’t want to kill pheasants—now behaved like “a trained assassin.”  Noem grabbed Cricket, but the dog “whipped around to bite me.”

As the chickens’ owner wept, Noem apologized and wrote the family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them disposes of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime.”

Through it all, writes Noem, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy.” 

For Noem, Cricket’s “crimes” were unforgivable—and utterly deserving of the death penalty: She was  

• “untrainable”
• “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and
• “less than worthless…as a hunting dog.”

So Noem got her shotgun and led Cricket to a gravel pit. 

“It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Her family also owned a male goat—unnamed in the book—that was “nasty and mean” because it hadn’t been castrated. Worse, it smelled “disgusting, musty, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothing. 

She dragged the goat to the same gravel pit. But just as she pulled the trigger on her shotgun the animal jumped and was only wounded. Noem went back to her truck, got another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.” 

At that point a school bus dropped off Noem’s children. “Hey, where’s Cricket?” her seven-year-old daughter, Kennedy, asked.

Most responses to the slaughters were furious and unforgiving:

• Rick Wilson, a member of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Noem “deliberately cruel” and “trash.”
• Ryan Busse, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Montana, said: “Anyone who has ever owned a birddog knows how disgusting, lazy and evil this is. Damn.” 
• Meghan McCain, daughter of former U.S. Senator John McCain: “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc – but not from killing a dog.”
• Podcaster Tommy Vietor called Noem “Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers”, a reference to a famous serial killer and a recent scandal over Noem’s cosmetic dentistry treatment. 

In March, she posted a laudatory video about cosmetic dental surgery that she had received in Texas. She claimed that a team of cosmetic dentists had given her a smile she can be proud of.

She’s being sued for not stating she had a financial interest in the product she was hustling.

In a post to X (formerly Twitter) Noem wrote: “What I learned from my years of public service, especially leading South Dakota through Covid, is people are looking for leaders who are authentic, willing to learn from the past, and don’t shy away from tough challenges.

“My hope is anyone reading this book will have an understanding that I always work to make the best decisions I can for the people in my life.” 

Among the “tough challenges” Noem wants to take on is becoming Vice President nominee to Donald Trump. Trump has already wrapped up the Republican nomination for President. And this has set off a scramble among Republican politicians to become his running mate.

It may be that Noem expected her admission of killing a defenseless dog and goat as the best way to prove to Trump that she can be as ruthless as himself. She might even be hinting that she would be willing to attack his opponents as brutally as she dealt with Cricket.