Former President Donald Trump still thinks South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is “fantastic” despite outrage over the revelation that she shot and killed her 14-month-old dog.
Trump appeared on Clay Travis and Buck Sexton’s podcast Wednesday and was asked about the controversy surrounding Noem’s book, which also included a fabricated meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Noem was long considered someone who could be Trump’s vice presidential pick.
“I think she’s great,” the presumptive Republican nominee said. —A couple of approximate stories, there is no doubt about that. And when you explain the story of the dog, people listen to it and people from different parts of the country probably feel a little differently, but that’s a difficult story.’
‘He had a bad week. “We all have a bad week,” added the former president.
Former President Donald Trump (left) still thinks South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (right) is “fantastic” despite the outcry over the revelation that she shot and killed her 14-month-old dog.
In the book, Noem explains how Cricket, a young wirehaired pointer, had an “aggressive personality,” killed several of her neighbor’s chickens and then bit her.
He then decided to shoot Cricket dead in the gravel pit on his family’s property, moments before his children returned from school.
Elsewhere in the book, he claimed that when he was a congressman he met Kim, a section his spokesman said would be removed from future copies.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, spokesperson Ian Fury blamed his ghostwriter.
“We were informed that the upcoming book ‘No Going Back’ has two small errors,” Fury said. ‘This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor. Kim Jong Un was included on a list of world leaders and he shouldn’t have been.
During the podcast interview, Trump indicated that he believed the ghostwriter excuse.
‘Until this week, he was doing incredibly well. “And she was hit hard, and sometimes you make books, and you have someone writing a book and maybe you don’t read it as carefully, you know,” Trump said. There are ghostwriters too. They help you and, in this case, they didn’t help you very much.
Trump supporters DailyMail.com, interviewed at his Saturday rally in New Jersey, said the dog shooting story and other factors about Noem disqualified her as a vice presidential candidate.
Jacki Ortiz, a 53-year-old woman from South Jersey, said she believed Noem’s chances of becoming Trump’s vice president were lost.
“No, I really like my dog,” Ortiz said.
Linda Donnelly, 80, of Long Island, New York, said she was “a big dog lover,” but showed Noem some grace.
‘I shouldn’t have put it in the book. She shouldn’t have done it like that, if you want to get rid of a dog go ahead [up] or put him to sleep,” Donnelly told DailyMail.com. But she’s from another state. They do things differently there.’
Donnelly had a different reason why he thought Noem should not be Trump’s choice.
“I think she’s beautiful,” the follower said. “Listen, if I were his wife, I wouldn’t want him to choose her.”
Nancy Martin, a 62-year-old cosmetologist from Baltimore, Maryland, had a similar opinion.
“I don’t think I could have a woman,” Martin told DailyMail.com.
