Tillis: Killings of Dog, Goat, American Citizens Show Noem’s Exceptionally Bad Leadership

Remember when Kristi Noem wrote about killing her dog Cricket for ruining a hunt to, in Kevin Woster’s words, “promote[…] herself as a country tough problem-solver“? Remember how she added that right after killing the dog, she was still so furious she shot her goat, too?

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina somehow missed that story before voting with 58 other Senators last year to confirm Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. Now that Noem has graduated to dispatching masked goons to shoot American citizens who ruin her immigrant hunts, Senator Tillis has finally read Noem’s book and figured out what it really says about her qualifications as a leader:

Tillis said he read the book last week and was baffled by her account.

“I train dogs, alright? And you are a farmer. You should know better. You should know that if you’re going out to a hunting lodge, and you’re putting pheasants out and you’re putting dogs out, you don’t take a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years,” he said.

He continued: “You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices. … And you killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly. You are a farmer. You don’t castrate a goat, they behave badly. You should have probably done that before.”

Tillis likened the anecdote to Noem’s approach to the immigration operation in Minnesota.

“My point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. Not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” the North Carolina Republican said. “We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you’ve demonstrated anything but that” [Stefan Becket, “Tillis Brings Up Noem’s Killing of Dog and Goat,” CBS News, 2026.03.03].

Senator Tillis is 14 months late in drawing the accurate conclusion about Noem’s leadership capabilities that South Dakota observers reached almost immediately:

Cricket was young and healthy and had a full dog’s life ahead. Maybe a very good life. And I have to believe that someone out there could have given it to her, if Noem had taken the time to look for the right person or right place.

Or she could have kept Cricket and tried more training and handling techniques — including patience — to find ways to make Cricket work in the fields and at home. Instead, she gave up and solved the problem with a gun.

Boom.

Sure, the moment was “difficult, messy and ugly.” But it was also a simple solution to a complicated problem — and, really, an easy way out.

Which brings me back to the title of Noem’s book: “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.”

Gov. Noem wants us to believe that she can solve the multiplicity of complex problems facing our nation, yet she couldn’t even solve the problem of an unruly dog.

At least, not without a gun [Kevin Woster, “What Noem’s Shot Heard Around the World Says About Her Approach to Problems,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2024.04.29].

…and…

After Noem made the death march to her farm’s gravel pit, where she shot Cricket, she was apparently still in an uncontrollable rage.

“Walking back up to the yard, I spotted our billy goat,” Noem wrote.

The nameless goat’s only sin in that moment was being in Noem’s field of view.

In the book, Noem tried to justify her snap decision to kill the goat by writing that it “loved to chase” her children and would “knock them down and butt them,” leaving them “terrified.” The animal also had a “wretched smell.”

But apparently none of that had been a big enough problem to do anything about it. Not until Noem got angry enough to kill a dog and decided she needed to kill again.

Noem says she “dragged” the goat to the gravel pit, “tied him to a post,” and shot at him. But the goat jumped when she shot.

“My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job,” she wrote.

She studiously avoided saying she wounded the goat with the first shot, but that’s the implication.

“Not wanting him to suffer,” she added — apparently experiencing her first twinge of feeling, after saying that killing the dog was not “pleasant” — “I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.”

The goat story not only reflects a disturbing lack of self-control, but also raises a question of law.

…In reality, what Noem did to the goat — dragging it to a gravel pit, tying it to a post, shooting at it once, leaving to get another shell, and shooting it again — sounds an awful lot like the legal definition of animal cruelty. That definition in South Dakota law is “to intentionally, willfully, and maliciously inflict gross physical abuse on an animal that causes prolonged pain, that causes serious physical injury, or that results in the death of the animal.”

…As Noem wrapped up her bloody tale in the book, she wrote that being a leader is often “messy” and “ugly.”

In her case, it certainly is [Seth Tupper, “Noem’s Dog Killing Was Bad, But to Really Understand Her, Consider the Goat,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2024.05.03].

All those things you said about Kristi Noem, Senator Tillis? 100% true. You should have said them 14 months ago and voted to protect America from Kristi Noem’s furious incompetence.