South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who has recently come under fire for shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, suggested in a Sunday interview that President Biden’s dog, Commander, should have met a similar fate.
Commander bit Secret Service personnel at least two dozen times between October 2022 and June 2023, according to documents released in February.
Noem wrote in her upcoming book, “No Going Back,” that if she ever got to the White House, she would differ from Biden in his handling of Commander, who was eventually banished from the White House grounds. “Commander, say hello to Cricket,” she wrote.
“Well, number one, Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people,” Noem said Sunday in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” when asked about the passage. “So, how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?”
“That’s a question that the president should be held accountable to,” she added, before moderator Margaret Brennan cut in, asking whether she was saying Commander should be shot.
Noem did not pause to acknowledge the question, but instead continued, saying, “That what’s the president should be accountable to, is, what is — what is the number?”
Noem, seen as a possible vice presidential pick for former President Trump’s 2024 ticket, has faced intense backlash to an anecdote in her soon-to-be-released memoir that detailed an incident in which Noem described killing her family’s dog about 20 years ago.
She has defended the move as “not a pleasant job” but said it “had to be done.” She called the dog “extremely dangerous.”