Former President Donald Trump has defended North Dakota Governor Kristi Noem over her disclosure that she shot and killed a family dog. “We all have bad weeks,” Trump said on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton podcast.
“I think she’s terrific,” Trump said of Noem, who wrote in a new book that she killed the dog, a puppy named Cricket, because the dog was bad at hunting and attacked the chickens owned by a family friend. In the book, Noem describes the dog as “less than worthless” and describes taking the dog to a gravel pit and shooting it.
The story dominated a publicity tour for Noem’s book, “No Going Back,” as Noem was grilled about the story on national newscasts including CBS Mornings, Face the Nation and Fox Business Network.
“A couple of rough stories, there’s no question about it,” the former president said of Noem’s bruising media appearances. In addition to the anecdote about the family dog, Noem was forced to explain why an anecdote in her book about meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “should not have been in the book.”
Trump, who is believed to be considering Noem as a potential running mate, said he understood why the anecdote about the family dog drew so much criticism. “The dog story, people hear that and people from different parts of the country probably feel a bit differently, but that’s a tough story,” Trump said. “She had a bad week. We all have bad weeks.”
“Until this week, she was doing incredibly well,” Trump said. “And she got hit hard, and sometimes you do books, and you have some guy writing a book and you maybe don’t read it as carefully, you know,” Trump added about the North Korea story, which Noem refused to directly explain in national interviews. “You have ghostwriters too. They help you, and they, in this case, didn’t help too much.”