South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is trying to dismiss outrage over her confession that she shot dead a dog she “hated” as “fake news” — while doubling down on her “hard decision” to kill it.
The 52-year-old Republican attacked reports about the killing — which The Post revealed has destroyed her chances of being picked as Donald Trump’s running mate — even though they were based entirely on her own words from an upcoming memoir.
“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News, while not denying the accuracy of the leaked excerpts.
“They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case,” she said of her revelation that she shot and killed the 14-month-old wirehair pointer she “hated” and found “worthless.”
“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy,” she said of Cricket, who she said was just 14 months old.
“It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”
Noem claimed that Cricket “had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive.
“We were her second chance. And she was — the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors,” she told Fox News.
“She attacked me. And it was a hard decision.”
Noem added that she had to make a choice between “keeping my small children and other people safe, or a dangerous animal, and I chose the safety of my children.”
“Farmers and ranchers, they expect it,” she continued.
“They know that once an animal like this starts killing, and starts killing just because they enjoy it, that is a very dangerous animal.”
The revelation has also drawn outrage and mockery from Democrats and Republicans.
Several critics have compared the executions to an incident involving Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) during his 2012 presidential campaign, over a story about him tying his dog to the roof of his car on a family road trip.
But Noem has repeatedly doubled down on her decision to kill her pet despite the story having potentially harmed her chances in the GOP’s vice presidential nominee race.
On Sunday, she continued to insist that her dog needed to be killed, on social platform X.
“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book — No Going Back,” she wrote of the “wirehair pointer, about 14 months old.”
“The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned.”
In her book, Noem said she took Cricket on a hunt to learn from other dogs — but claimed the animal instead ruined the excursion by going “out of her mind with excitement” and attacking some chickens like a “trained assassin.”
When Noem tried to grab the dog, it “whipped around to bite me,” she wrote.
“I hated that dog,” Noem continued, calling Cricket “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
“At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.”
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, explained that she then got her gun and led Cricket to a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” she said, “but it had to be done.”
She recalled how her daughter Kennedy “looked around confused” when she came home from school that day, asking: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
It was not the only animal the politician writes about shooting dead in her book.
Noem also detailed how she killed a “nasty and mean” male goat that had not been castrated.
She described the animal as smelling “disgusting, musky, rancid” and claimed it “loved to chase” Noem’s children and knock them down.
The goat was also “dragged to a gravel pit,” but jumped when she pulled the trigger, and survived the wound. Noem went back to her truck to get another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down,” she wrote.
“I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here,” she concluded the story.
A construction crew witnessed her kill both animals, she said in the book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” which is due to be published this month.
