Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, already below fireplace for killing her household’s 14-month-old canine and boasting about it, on Sunday took purpose at one other household’s pet: Commander, President Biden’s bite-prone German shepherd.
Showing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Ms. Noem, a Republican, prompt that Commander, who was banished from the White Home final fall after bloodying a lot of Secret Service brokers, must also have been put down.
“Joe Biden’s canine has attacked 24 Secret Service individuals,” she instructed her interviewer, Margaret Brennan. “So how many individuals is sufficient individuals to be attacked and dangerously damage earlier than making a decision on a canine?”
Commander was despatched to an undisclosed location after the Secret Service recorded 24 biting episodes involving him between October 2022 and July 2023, about half of which required medical consideration.
Ms. Noem’s opinion of the correct approach to have dealt with him emerged in the course of the publicity ramp-up to the discharge of her memoir, “No Going Again,” which is to be revealed on Tuesday.
The South Dakota governor, who had been extensively seen as a contender to be former President Donald J. Trump’s operating mate, wrote within the guide a few feminine wire-haired pointer named Cricket that she had hoped to make use of to hunt pheasant on her ranch. She stated that the canine proved “untrainable,” “harmful to anybody she got here involved with” and “lower than nugatory” as a searching canine — so she shot her in a gravel pit.
“I hated that canine,” Ms. Noem wrote.
She additionally alluded to Commander in elaborating on her choice to shoot Cricket: “A canine who bites is harmful and unpredictable (are you listening, Joe Biden?) — particularly in case you are operating a enterprise the place individuals work together along with your canine,” she wrote.
The White Home didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Within the CBS interview, Ms. Noem sought to defend the killing of Cricket — and a goat she additionally shot the identical day — as “a alternative I revamped 20 years in the past” to “shield individuals.”
However in her guide, she additionally nodded to the concept that Cricket could also be in a greater place, or maybe a worse one. Imagining turning into president in 2025 and sending Mr. Biden’s canine to satisfy his maker, Ms. Noem added: “Commander, say good day to Cricket for me.”
