Noem Is Kryptonite To Trump Now Between Black Comedy and Rage

I still haven’t decided which is worse: 1. The fact that Kristi Noem had no problem shooting a puppy in the face; or 2. The fact that she thought it was perfectly okay to talk about it. I have wrestled with both horns of this dilemma and I honestly don’t know which one is worse. I well recall a scene in the mini series Chernobyl, which was very moving. The radiation was spreading throughout the countryside and people were being evacuated. Animals were being euthanized — albeit gently. The elderly were being ripped from their homes.

In the midst of this a young soldier came upon a litter of puppies in a farmhouse and it was his job to kill them — or let them die a horrible death from radiation poisoning. An older soldier stepped in and said, “I’ll do it,” when he saw the obvious pain on the young man’s face. Now we know that what was missing from this script was gun slinging governor Kristi Noem, who would have blown all the puppies away without hesitation and not thought the first thing of it.

And the problem with that? A character like Noem is hard to believe. The soldiers who had a kind of universal morality, who did not want to hurt the baby dogs, man’s best friend, were behaving normally. That’s why the scene was so moving. We could empathize. If you had put the governor of South Dakota in there, playing herself, it would have been next level jarring. Nobody would have believed it.

But truth is stranger than fiction as we have seen in our lives and certainly the past eight years. Here are a couple of videos, one by Brent Terhune and the other by J-L Cauvin, who gives Trump’s side of the controversy. (Trump has not weighed in on this yet and I don’t expect him to.) First, let’s start out with this short editorial by none other than Catturd.

When you lose Catturd Kristi… pic.twitter.com/qEcUyQi8m6

— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) April 27, 2024

Imagine her thinking it wouldn't be?

— Dav Ray (@DavRayAZ29) April 27, 2024

The right-wingers are not happy with this. At least on this much we all seem to agree, “hating” a puppy and then shooting it in the face are not the actions of any decent person that anyone wants to know. And now along come the comedians. Look out Kristi, look out.

pic.twitter.com/ELuTjxSOgB

— 💛💙 🌊 Willow 🌊💙💛 (@Fuzzy_Fuzzbutt) April 27, 2024

Again I say, if you wrote this in a script people would laugh at you. “And then the next sub-plot was the vice presidential candidate confessing to shooting a disobedient puppy in the face. And if that weren’t enough, she bragged about killing a goat and then two horses.” Nobody would believe this. You would be called the most pathetic hack of all time if you created a character that behaved this way. Yet look what Real Life created, in the persona of Governor Noem. Just by the by, there’s this.

Sarah’s brother David Huckabee was fired as a Boy Scout counselor for killing a stray dog. pic.twitter.com/57ciYZVRGx

— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) April 27, 2024

And here is J-L Cauvin chiming in, in the persona of Donald Trump.

There’s a thought, the world will respect us more if we have a sociopath who not only doesn’t bond with her animals but decides to execute them on a whim — and then writes about it, characterizing it as some kind of “tough decision making” ability. No, bitch, you are seriously mentally ill.

I wonder if she’s ever bonded with her children (some people do not) or if she’s pondered shooting them when they don’t meet her standards of behavior?

I doubt that Noem has ever heard of a book called Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, let alone read it. In it, Lewis opines that morality is a universal concept. It may vary across cultures but there are some basic bedrock rules. The golden rule, in some form, is found across all cultures. That makes sense. One can hardly go wrong if one treats others with the same kind of decency and respect that one would wish to be treated with.

There is something fundamentally wrong with shooting a baby dog in the face and ending its life. Noem could have adopted it out, given it to somebody on another farm or ranch, she had all kinds of options. One option would have been to hire a professional dog trainer since that’s a job that she totally fails at.

She had many options. But she chose to shoot the dog in the face.

It’s so tragic that Kristi Noem didn’t see this important PSA before she did what she did. #Justice4Cricket pic.twitter.com/86T7Coa4SJ

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) April 27, 2024

Obviously, I’ve never met Kristi Noem and I’ll certainly never meet the dog in this story. But I can tell you from other dog/human (or cat/human or horse/human) interactions that I’ve seen in my life that animals are individuals just like people. The same coaxing, reward system, you name it, that works on one animal will not work on another. Each animal is an individual and you need to communicate on that basis and see what works.

And you’ll know what works. In the previous piece I wrote on this topic I mentioned the ranch where I used to ride in Santa Clarita, California, and some of the horses there. When you’re good to a horse (or cat, or dog) they look at you a certain way. And that look of love in their eyes is a priceless gift. It’s real. You can’t demand it from an animal but you can certainly inspire it in the animal. And when you see that look, from an animal you cherish, then you know that you and that animal have a real communication, a real connection. The human/animal connection is magical. It’s a special kind of love like no other.

I doubt if Noem knows that magic because if you can love and relate to one animal, you’re unlikely to be this blase about another. My guess is that Noem doesn’t know how to communicate with animals and she’s certainly no dog trainer. She made that clear. If a creature doesn’t respond to her edicts, rather than look at how she’s approaching the situation and modify her own behavior, try a different approach, she condemns the animal. And then she shoots the animal. In the face, no less. Not that shooting it in the back would be any better, but somehow the fact that she shot it in the face, a puppy face, just makes this saga the more unbearable. At least to anybody who has ever raised a puppy or a kitten.

Noem is the one at fault here, not the dog. She should be grateful that we have something called The Rule Of Law which will keep somebody who thinks she’s “useless” from picking up a gun and getting rid of her.

I don’t know how this story will end, but I am dead certain of one thing: Noem does not know what all the fuss is about over this and given the same choice today, she would do no different.

Let’s see if the Trump/PuppyKiller24 ticket manifests. I don’t think so. I think Noem’s MAGA makeover was for naught and Elise Stefanik is dancing tonight. Trump doesn’t need any more controversy than he’s already got going. That puppy, denied a life of joy, is getting karmic revenge from the grave.