Republican Sen. Mitt Romney was asked Tuesday about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s dog-killing scandal and used his answer to settle a score with his ex-political rival, former President Barack Obama.
Romney got dragged politically when he ran for president in 2008 and 2012 for strapping a pet carrier to the car roof in 1983 and traveling 12 hours to Canada with Seamus the Irish setter tucked inside.
The dog protested by having diarrhea in his crate – and Americans objected by not electing Romney and reelecting Democrat Obama instead.
Now with a new dog-related political scandal, the Capitol Hill press corps swarmed Romney this week after Noem, a possible VP pick for former President Donald Trump, outed herself as a dog killer.
‘I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog and my dog loved me,’ Romney told reporters, according to Mediaite.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney was asked Tuesday about Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s dog-killing scandal after a dog-related scandal tainted his 2008 and 2012 presidential runs
Romney was accused of animal cruelty for putting his Irish setter Seamus (pictured) in a crate and attaching it to his car’s roof for a 12-hour drive to Canada for a family vacation in 1983. Seamus suffered from diarrhea during the trip
Obama admitted to eating dog meat as a kid during the years he and his mother lived in Indonesia.
He made light of his dog-related scandal during the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
‘What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?’ he asked, riffing off the famous Sarah Palin line.
‘A pit bull is delicious,’ Obama said.
Noem’s scandal started when the Guardian got an early copy of her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, and reported that she had gunned down her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer and a male goat.
The governor said she wanted to show she’s capable of dealing with anything that’s ‘difficult, messy and ugly.’
But critics, including Romney, mostly found the dog’s death unnecessary.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem writes in her forthcoming book about shooting and killing her 14-month-old dog Cricket after the pooch ate the neighbor’s chickens and ruined a pheasant hunt. She has faced criticism from both sides of the political aisle
Former President Barack Obama admitted to eating dog meat as a kid when his family moved to Indonesia. He joked about it at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner: ”What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?’ ‘A pit bull is delicious’
‘I cannot imagine circumstances that would lead one to take one’s dog to a gravel pit, particularly an 11 month old and shoot it,’ the Utah senator added, slightly messing up Cricket’s age at the time of the dog’s grisly death.
‘Other people may have a different point of view,’ Romney offered.
In the book, the governor writes that she shot Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer at the gravel pit on her family property, moments before her children came home from school.
The dog, Noem claimed, had an ‘aggressive personality’ that couldn’t be tamed – as evidenced by the fact that Cricket ruined a pheasant hunt for being ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.’
Additionally when the South Dakota governor took Cricket with her to meet a local family the dog started killing the family’s chickens like ‘a trained assassin.’
Cricket ‘grabbed one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.’
When Noem finally grabbed the dog she wrote that Cricket ‘whipped around to bite me.’
A Facebook picture shows South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem with a gun. In her forthcoming book she writes about Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer, that Noem shot at the gravel pit on her family property, moments before her children came home from school
Cricket was a wirehaired pointer (pictured) who had an ‘aggressive personality,’ Noem claimed and ate a number of chickens that belonged to a local family like ‘a trained assassin’ before turning around and biting her
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is photographed with a different dog that she owned, Hazel, a Vizsla
Cricket was ‘the picture of pure joy.’ Meanwhile the chickens’ owner wept.
Noem said she wrote a check ‘for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime.’
‘I hated that dog,’ Noem wrote, believing the 14-month-old pooch to be ‘untrainable,’ ‘dangerous to anyone she came in contact with’ and ‘less than worthless … as a hunting dog.’
So she decided to kill Cricket.
‘At that moment,’ the governor wrote. ‘I realized I had to put her down.’
‘It was not a pleasant job,’ Noem said, ‘but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.’
Noem decided to off the family goat as well because he was ‘nasty and mean,’ as he remained uncastrated and smelled ‘disgusting, musky [and] rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ the governor’s children.
She ‘dragged him to the gravel pit’ as well, but the goat jumped as she tried to shoot him, leaving him briefly alive.
Noem said she had to go back to her truck and retrieve another shell and then ‘hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.’
Her actions were witnessed, she said, by a construction crew working nearby.
Moments later, the bus dropped off her kids.
‘Kennedy looked around confused,’ Noem recalled of her daughter, who asked, ‘Hey where’s Cricket?’
Noem then admitted, ‘I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.’
Since the public outcry over her treatment of Cricket, Noem has been forced to respond multiple times.
On Friday Noem wrote on X, ‘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,’ she said.
‘If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping, preorder “No Going Back,”‘ the governor added.
On Sunday in a post on X, Noem described Cricket as a ‘working dog’ though admitted ‘I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story.’
She then argued she had a right to shoot him.
‘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.
