After spending over a year cozying up to Donald Trump in an attempt to be picked as his #2 in the 2024 presidential election, Kristi Noem has managed to kill whatever chances she in just a five day period.

“She was already unlikely to be picked as VP but had a shot,” a Trump insider told the New York Post this week. “After this, it’s just impossible.”

“Trump isn’t a dog person necessarily, but I think he understands that you can’t choose a puppy killer as your pick, for blatantly obvious reasons.”

In case you haven’t heard, in her new book, South Dakota’s gay-hating governor shares in graphic detail the way she took her 14-month-old puppy, a female German wire-haired pointer named Cricket, who Noem describes as “less than worthless” and says she “hated,” to a gravel pit and shot her in the head for being too rambunctious.

She also reveals that she killed a “musky, disgusting, rancid” goat for chasing after her kids. However, the first shot only wounded the animal so she had to go back to her truck to reload her gun to finish the job.

Almost immediately after the story broke on Friday, a backlash ensued, with people from all sides of the political spectrum responding in shock, horror, and disgust. Turns out, there’s one issue Democrats and Republicans can actually agree on: nobody likes people who murder puppies.

After the story was first reported, Noem doubled down on her puppy-killing antics, tweeting: “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

When–surprise!–that didn’t quell the outrage, she put out another statement that was a little softer but no better than her first one.

In it, she said she “can understand” (can she?) why “some people” (pretty much everyone) are “upset” (horrified, is more life it) about the time she killed a puppy execution style, but she didn’t break any laws doing so.

“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” she wrote.

And when that still didn’t calm people down, she went on Newsmax to talk to Greta Van Susteren about how sad she was over having to put down three of her family’s horses recently.

“These weren’t just horses,” 52-year-old Noem lamented. “These were our family members. These horses were old. They were in their late, late 20s.”

The body count keeps rising, folx!

Political pundits, Trump insiders, Republican lawmakers, and just regular old people alike say Noem’s attempts at damage control aren’t helping her image and certainly won’t help Trump avoid prison get elected in November, so there’s no way in hell he’s gonna pick her as his VP now.

(Her book is also probably going to bomb when it hits bookstore shelves next week, but that’s just collatoral damage at this point.)

“She’s DOA,” a Trump ally told The Hill yesterday. “Any time you have to respond more than once to a story, it’s not good.”

“She’s basically taken herself out of the running to be VP,” a Republican strategist added. “There’s so many things wrong with that story on so many levels.”

While speaking with Steve Bannon on his “Triggered” podcast this week, Donald Trump Jr., a noted animal killer himself, said Noem shooting a puppy in a gravel pit “was not ideal.”

“I read that and I’m like: ‘who put that in the book?’ I was like ‘Your ghost writer must really not like you if they’re gonna include that one. That was rough’,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bannon called the 52-year-old governor “a little too based,” which is a slang term on the right for a person who’s not politically correct.

And South Dakota GOP Sen. Mike Rounds said Noem’s admitted history of animal cruelty probably isn’t going to reflect well in the polls.

“I don’t think anyone has taken a poll on it, but I can tell you, as a person who has had dogs in the past, my kids have got dogs and so forth. It is an item of discussion,” he said. “I don’t see how it helps. These dogs become a member of a family, you know. People identify with that.”

Don Jr.’s fiance, Kimberly Guilfoyle also weighed in on the controversy during an appearance on Real America’s Voice to promote her new children’s book about, ironically, a puppy.

Guilfoyle, who is good friends with Noem, suggested that maybe someone “slipped that in” the book without the governor noticing because “I don’t know, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. So, that’s a tough one to take.”

Even Mitt Romney, who infamously tied his dog to the roof of a car during a cross-country family road trip, weighed in this week, saying, “I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me.”

The memes have also been relentless…

Trump himself has yet to comment on the story. (He’s been a bit preoccupied with his criminal trial in New York.) But insiders say he’s just as weirded out by the whole thing as everyone else.

Evidently, you can shoot a person in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. But killing puppies? Well, that’s another story!

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