Kristi Noem Just Cricketed Her Career In Disastrous Interview

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been traveling the interview circuit ahead of the release of her book, "No Going Back," which is set to drop on Tuesday. The first excerpts of the book - including Noem's tale about shooting a dog named Cricket - set off a firestorm of publicity and controversy, and Noem has offered no apologies. In these interviews she's given more detail about what led to her decision to shoot Cricket in the head and dump her body in a gravel pit. Whether one agrees with Noem's decision or not, the fact that the incident has to be explained is a problem. As RedState's Andrew Malcolm has observed about politics, "If you're explaining, you're losing."Show more

As it turns out, the only thing Noem's worse at than explaining is deflecting. In a "Face the Nation" interview on Sunday, Noem was confronted about both the puppy story and a factual error in the book, and in trying to deflect gave terrible answers and made a huge gaffe. Then, she cried victim - not a great look for a woman whose book is designed to show how tough she is. Sis, if you can't handle an interview with Margaret Brennan, you're not gonna be able to handle Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Brennan quoted a portion of the book in which Noem reminisced about an alleged meeting with Kim Jong-un, and then asked her whether that meeting happened. Noem wrote: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I have been a children’s pastor after all.”

Syd Seiler, a former U.S. intelligence officer who spent decades working on issues between the U.S. and North Korea, told the Associated Press no such meeting occurred: “Nothing like this happened,” he said, adding that he was working at the White House and State Department during that time period and was not notified of a congressional meeting with Kim. Noem did join an international congressional trip, known as a codel, to Japan, South Korea and China in 2014. Lol. Yikes. There really aren't any great explanations Noem could give, but trying to weasel out of it by acting like a journalist asking for specifics on meetings she brought up in her book is somehow out of bounds and asking for classified information isn't the way. Also, why would the anecdote have to be brought to her attention? We all know that she didn't actually write the book, but she should have at least read the book before signing off on its publication.

Noem did try to pivot the conversation to her experience "work[ing] on ag policy and federal policy for over 30 years," but Brennan then said, "Right, but you never went to North Korea." This leads to Noem's next facepalm moment.

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