To: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem
From: The governor’s public relations team
Subject: Sorry about the dog-killing issue
Dear Gov. Noem:
Well, this past weekend didn’t go exactly as we had hoped, and we would like to sincerely apologize for the frequency with which you have now been called “a dog murderer.”
When we read the text of your upcoming book, specifically the part in which you describe shooting your young hunting dog Cricket in a gravel pit, it didn’t raise any red flags on our end. When you described Cricket doing all kinds of dog things like chasing chickens and generally having a blast, we thought that was relatable. And then when you wrote, “I hated that dog,” and described how you shot and killed the puppy because it wasn’t a good hunting dog, we thought: “Hmmmm, this might be a way to show the MAGA loyalists out there a different side of the governor.”
The MAGA folks love toughness, and former President Donald Trump is always saying people “choked like a dog” or “lied like a dog.” It seemed this crowd would be amenable to the occasional dispatching of a puppy or two, so we viewed the anecdote in your book less as a dog execution and more as a dog-execution-ppurtunity.
Clearly, that was not a wise strategic decision, and for that we are deeply sorry. Who knew so many Americans like dogs? Who would have imagined people on both sides of the political aisle would find it objectionable that a person would up and shoot a puppy to death rather than take the very simple steps of training the dog, taking the dog to a humane shelter or finding something other than hunting for the dog to do?
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We were as a surprised as you. Just a massive “Oops!” on our part.
We really saw this as an opportunity to grab the senseless-dog-execution demographic, and maybe even make some inroads with independent sociopaths and future serial killers. We just didn’t see the blowback coming.
To that end, we also apologize profusely for allowing you to share details of the goat you shot and killed, also in a gravel pit.
No governor and potential Republican vice presidential candidate should have to wake up and read the following actual words, which appeared in The Guardian:
“Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she ‘dragged him to a gravel pit,’ the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then ‘hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.’
“At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
What a LOSER!Joe Biden hasn’t targeted a judge’s daughter or sold a single Bible.
“‘Kennedy looked around confused,’ Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: ‘Hey, where’s Cricket?’ ”
Yeah, in retrospect, we should have nixed all parts of the book dealing with the murder of animals in gravel pits. That’s on us, Governor, not you. As you know, we fully support your routine acts of animal homicide because we’re real Americans and not liberals who think there’s something “wrong” with dragging an innocent puppy to a pit and shooting it because it chased chickens.
If you want to Make America Great Again, you have to kill a few puppies, right?
We realize the fact that your upcoming book is titled “No Going Back” is unfortunately ironic, given that virtually everyone in America now thinks you’re a monster. And we realize that the line “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here” coming right after the whole dog/goat murder bit in the book seems … well, not really great.
But not to worry. Today we’re going to start calling a lot of things “woke” and gin up some “antifa” sightings, which should calm things down for you.
Again, our deepest apologies for not stopping you from bragging about being a dog assassin. It won’t happen again. Because we are all quitting after today.
Your career is clearly over.
— Your loyal public relations team
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
