“I hated this dog,” Noem wrote, referring to his 14-month-old wirehaired pointer.
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Donald Trump’s eldest daughter how the president-elect reacted to Kristi Noem’s admission that she had shot her dog to death.
The South Dakota governor, now Trump’s pick for Homeland Security secretary, confessed in her memoir to shooting Cricket, her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, two decades ago. The confession was met with surprise and outrage, and many believed that his hopes of becoming their vice president were over.
Donald Trump Jr. recalled his father’s reaction to this story to Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt, who detailed it in his upcoming e-book Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power.
“That’s not good at all,” Donald Trump reportedly told his son, according to the New York Post, which obtained a copy of the book.
“You wouldn’t even kill a dog, and you kill everything,” the 78-year-old Republican said, referring to his son’s common affairs.
In her book No Going Back, Noem wrote: “I hated that dog.” She added that Cricket was “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
“At that moment,” Noem continued, “I knew I had to put her down. ” He admitted that “it was not a pleasant job… it had to be done. ”
The dog-killing story emerged as Trump was mulling over his choice of vice presidential candidate; Noem even considered being on her short list, although she supposedly “filed” long before the story of the dog murder was revealed.
Rumors of an affair between Noem and Corey Lewandowski, the director of Trump’s 2016 crusade, have not helped the governor’s chances of joining the 2024 Republican ticket, Isenstadt wrote.
Noem has repeatedly denied the alleged romance.
On top of the romance rumors, the then-GOP candidate expressed some trepidation about picking Noem as his running mate. The duo met at Mar-a-Lago in February 2024, according to the book.
They discussed the state’s abortion ban, one of the strictest in the country, which states that the exception to the ban is to save the life of the pregnant person.
“Trump came out inspired through Noem,” Isenstadt wrote, “but remained concerned about how his state’s legislation would be used against her through the Democrats. “
Reacting to the allegations contained in the e-book, a spokesperson for Noem said, “This would not be the first time [the author] has reported false verbal exchanges that Governor Noem never had. . . As I have said many times, the accusation of an affair is absolutely false. She never had a verbal exchange with President Trump or his team about a non-existent affair. I can’t wait to see [the] e-book on the shelves of “fiction. “
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s transition team, also responded to the allegations in the upcoming book. “President Trump won a historic victory because he laid out an ambitious vision for this country after four disastrous years of Joe Biden,” he said. “We will not dignify those types of salacious, unverified stories that have nothing to do with helping the American people or making America great again. »
The Independent has contacted representatives for Lewandowski, Noem and Trump for comment.
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