Kristi Noem Just Learned That No One Gets Away With the Bullshit Donald Trump Does Except Trump Himself

When I first saw that Kristi Noem had dynamited a promising career by bragging in her latest book about dragging a fourteen-month-old puppy to a gravel pit and assassinating it for various transgressions, I wondered why an editor would allow such a passage to be included in the book if they didn’t want the public to despise her. 

I’ve published several books with major publishers, so I can vouch that it is a very long, involved process. During this time, you have plenty of time to consider what should be included in a book and what should be left out,

That does not keep authors from making mistakes, of course. If I had it all to do over, I would have ended my 2009 memoir The Big Rewind when I started writing for the A.V. Club rather than devote the final third of the book to my surreal experiences as a panelist on AMC’s Movie Club with John Ridley, an increasingly reputable movie review panel show hosted by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave. 

I thought the behind-the-scenes drama and dark comedy of Movie Club With John Ridley were fascinating and made for terrific reading. Critics and readers strongly disagreed. 

I similarly would have scrubbed every reference to Donald Trump in The Weird Accordion to Al, my 2020 book about “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life’s work in various fields because a number of seething reviews singled out the handful of references to the then-president as the reason a 500-page celebration of a true American original was completely worthless and also a rage-filled political manifesto disguised as a musical reference book. 

I was surprised to learn that an editor or editorial team had succeeded in editing out the fun story about how murdering Cricket proved that Noem was a politically incorrect badass willing to do whatever it took to protect her home and her family, even if it involved pumping bullets inside the brains of unruly animals. 

Noem’s Cricket story was understandably cut from her literary debut by editors who understood the infinite damage such an admission would undoubtedly cause. 

The widely reviled MAGA maverick believed so strongly that writing about killing a dog would reflect well upon her, her judgment, and her sense of morality that she tried to insert it in multiple books. 

She kept sticking that fucker in there until it finally stuck. That is perversely persistent. When people who know better tell you to cut the part of your book where you kill a puppy, listen to them. They understand publishing and the public better than you do. 

The other development regarding Noem’s book is a far-fetched story about meeting Kim Jong-Un when she was in the House of Representatives, bragging, “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all). Dealing with foreign leaders takes resolve, preparation, and determination.” turned out to be horseshit. 

Noem knew the story was false when she included it in a book that would be subject to worldwide public scrutiny, but she kept it all the same. 

Why fib so egregiously when it’s so easy to call you out on your bullshit? She lied because she thought that it made her look tough, and toughness/puppy murder is her brand. 

Donald Trump with a hero dog whose presence he was willing to tolerate for as long as it took to take this picture.

Noem is a MAGA conservative in the Donald Trump mode. Trump famously was taped bragging about fondling women’s genitalia as a greeting. Boasting about grabbing comely maidens by the pussy is the closest Trump has come to expressing affection for dogs or cats. 

Here’s the thing: Trump got away with it. We had incontrovertible evidence that the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president was even grosser and more repellent than we previously thought (and we already thought that he was very gross and repellent) and he got elected to the highest office in the world all the same. 

Trump also gets away with lying egregiously on an hourly basis. Why? I hate to agree with Trump on anything, but when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. 

That includes lying reflexively about things that can be easily disproven, like Noem’s wild claim about staring down Kim Jong Un. 

Could Trump get away with bragging about killing a puppy? Probably. He got away with “grab ‘em by the pussy,” and he got away with more lies than any president in American history. 

Noem was a rising star in the Republican Party, a MAGA acolyte who purposefully fashioned herself in the image of Donald Trump. However, she has learned that she wasn’t really a star.

The Republican Party only has room for one star. That is Donald Trump, and he gets away with it because of the cult of personality he has built but also because he is a rich white man who has been famous and wealthy forever. 

The Big WhoopNathan RabinDonald Trump, Kristi Noem