Don Jr shares Trump’s reaction to Kristi Noem dog-slaying story: ‘Even you wouldn’t kill a dog’
The eldest child of Donald Trump revealed how the president-elect reacted to Kristi Noem’s admission that she fatally shot her dog.
The South Dakota governor, now Trump’s pick for Homeland Security Secretary, confessed in her memoir to shooting her 14-month-old wire-haired pointer Cricket two decades ago. The confession was met with shock and outrage, and many believed her hopes for being his vice president had ended.
Donald Trump Jr. recalled his father’s reaction to the shocking tale to Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt, who detailed it in his upcoming book Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power.
“That’s not good at all,” Donald Trump reportedly told his son, according to the New York Post, which obtained a copy of the book.
“Even you wouldn’t kill a dog, and you kill everything,” the 78-year-old Republican said, referring to his son’s frequent outdoor adventures.
In her book No Going Back, Noem wrote: “I hated that dog.” She added that Cricket was “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
“At that moment,” Noem continued, “I realized I had to put her down.” She admitted that “it was not a pleasant job... it had to be done”.
The dog-killing story emerged as Trump was weighing his pick for running mate; Noem was considered to be on his veep shortlist, although she was reportedly “cast aside” long before the dog-killing story came to light.
Rumors of an affair between Noem and Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, didn’t help the governor’s chances of joining the 2024 Republican ticket, Isenstadt wrote.
Noem has repeatedly denied the alleged romance.
On top of the romance rumors, the then-GOP candidate expressed some trepidation about picking Noem as his running mate. The duo met at Mar-a-Lago in February 2024, according to the book.
They discussed her state’s abortion ban, one of the strictest in the country, which stipulates the only exception to the ban is to save the pregnant person’s life.
“Trump came away impressed by Noem,” Isenstadt wrote, “but remained concerned about how her state’s laws could be used against her by Democrats.”
In response to the claims in the book, a spokesperson for Noem said: “This wouldn’t be the first time that [the author] reported fake conversations that Governor Noem never had … As I have said many times, the allegation of an affair is completely false. She never had conversations with President Trump or his team about a nonexistent affair. I look forward to seeing [the] book on the ‘fiction’ shelves.”
Steven Cheung, a Trump transition team spokesperson, also responded to the forthcoming book’s allegations. “President Trump achieved a historic victory because he laid out a bold vision for this country after four disastrous years of Joe Biden,” he said. “We will not dignify these types of salacious and unverified stories that have nothing to do with helping the American people or Making America Great Again.”
The Independent has contacted representatives for Lewandowski, Noem and Trump for comment.
