Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, already under fire for killing and bragging about her family’s 14-month-old dog, took aim Sunday at another family’s pet: Commander, President Biden’s bite-prone German Shepherd.
Ms. Noem, a Republican, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and suggested that Commander, who was banished from the White House last fall after his bloody murders of a number of Secret Service agents, should also have been put down.
“Joe Biden’s dog attacked 24 Secret Service people,” she told her interviewer Margaret Brennan. “So how many people are enough to be attacked and dangerously injured before you decide to get a dog?”
Commander was sent to an undisclosed location after the Secret Service recorded 24 acrimonious episodes involving him between October 2022 and July 2023, about half of which required medical attention.
Ms. Noem’s views on the right way to deal with him emerged ahead of the release of her memoir, “No Going Back,” due out on Tuesday.
The South Dakota governor, widely seen as a contender for former President Donald J. Trump’s candidacy, wrote in the book about a female wire-haired cat named Cricket with whom she planned to hunt pheasants on her ranch. She said the dog proved to be “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came into contact with” and “beyond worthless” as a hunting dog – so she shot him in a gravel pit.
“I hated that dog,” Ms. Noem wrote.
She also alluded to Commander when explaining her decision to shoot Cricket: “A dog that bites is dangerous and unpredictable (are you listening, Joe Biden?) – especially when you run a business in which “People interact with your dogs,” she wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the CBS interview, Ms. Noem tried to defend the killing of Cricket – and a goat she also shot the same day – as “a decision I made over 20 years ago” to “protect people.”
But in her book she also gave a nod to the idea that cricket could be in a better place, or perhaps a worse one. Ms. Noem imagined becoming president in 2025 and sending Mr. Biden’s dog to his maker, adding: “Commander, give my regards to Cricket.”
Source link
2024-05-05 16:36:23
www.nytimes.com