As she entered a second consecutive weekend trying to manage fallout from revelations in her upcoming memoir that she shot her dog to death, South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, had conceded that she would need to correct multiple factual inaccuracies in other parts of the book.
Meanwhile, a Republican fundraiser which Noem was supposed to headline had to be canceled after threats against the event staff, hotel venue and governor, according to organizers.
And in one of the clearest signs yet that she has fallen out of contention to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in November’s election, as she once was, Rolling Stone published a report quoting multiple sources close to the former president who assured he was “disgusted” by her dog-killing story.
Noem has faced an increasingly acrimonious backlash after the Guardian reported on an excerpt from her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, in which she recounts fatally shooting both a 14-month-old dog, Cricket, along with an unnamed goat.
She has defended her actions as being typical of the unpleasant things people who live on farms and answer the call to politics must do.
But her polling numbers have plummeted as her justifications for the animal killings have prompted outrage. And since then, Noem’s memoir has only drawn more scrutiny.
Experts widely doubted the veracity of an anecdote which Noem included in the book about meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and feeling underestimated by him. Her camp subsequently conceded she never met the North Korean leader.
Additionally, a spokesperson for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley denied the book’s characterization of a conversation between Haley and Noem, who claimed Haley threatened her after she challenged Haley’s status as a leading woman in the Republican party.
The book claims the conversation occurred when Noem first took office in 2019, but it was a year later.
Whatever the case, Noem’s chief of communications, Ian Fury, told the New York Times that both errors would be corrected.
“It was brought to our attention that the upcoming book No Going Back has two small errors,” Fury said to the Times. “This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor. Kim Jong-un was included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”
Separately on Friday, the chairperson of Colorado’s Jefferson county Republican party said the organization canceled its annual fundraiser because Noem’s planned headlining appearance had spurred multiple threats.
Noem was still set to headline Florida’s Brevard county Republican party fundraiser on 25 May. The county party’s chairperson defended Noem’s decision to kill Cricket, and the purchase of a ticket includes a copy of No Going Back.
Rounding out the South Dakota governor’s Friday was the Rolling Stone report based on sources of the publication who recounted how Trump has expressed disgust with Noem’s killing of Cricket in closed-door meetings and telephone conversations.
“Why would she do that?” Trump – who is grappling with nearly 90 felony criminal charges, among other legal problems – was quoted as saying. “What is wrong with her?”
Rolling Stone added: “He has expressed bewilderment that she would have ever admitted to doing this, willingly and in her own writing, and has argued it demonstrates she has a poor grasp of ‘public relations’.”
The publication also wrote that Trump’s responses were leaked to definitively eliminate Noem from vice-presidential contention.
Noem is scheduled to appear on Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation and is expected to be asked about the ongoing fallout from her new book.
