Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" can't stop thinking about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's "murderous rampage" against her family's pets.
The Republican governor likely saw her shot at becoming Donald Trump's running mate vanish after revealing in a forthcoming political memoir that she had gunned down an exuberant 14-month-old puppy and then a disagreeable goat, and the panelists agreed Noem's admission was likely intended to boost her political fortunes.
"Everybody understands the realities of farm life, there are sometimes different rules for livestock than you might think of for family pets," said political analyst Claire McCaskill. "But really, the damning thing here is that, in Trumpworld, in MAGA world, she actually believed this would help her. She actually believed that showing this kind of brutal, brutal cowardice and violence over an animal would elevate her in the eyes of Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it, this is book, everything she's been doing for the last nine months, it's all about trying to become vice president."
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"I don't know if you remember the episode on 'Succession' where Logan Roy did the 'boar on the floor' game, where he made grown men, you know, scramble around the floor for a piece of sausage. That's what I feel like the vice presidency contest is. Trump is going to have a boar on the floor exercise for all these guys at Mar-a-Lago. They're all diminishing themselves with what they're willing to do to try to stand by his side. It really is sickening."
Co-host Willie Geist seemed surprised to find himself in agreement with bombastic Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who said on her show that Americans were united in their love for dogs and blamed Noem for being unable to train the pup she then killed.
"Americans, if nothing else, ice cream, the laughter of children, puppies, in a divided nation, these are the things that bring us together," Geist said. "It's pretty staggering that Gov. Noem thought, 'I ought to slip this into the book, maybe Donald Trump will like it.' The number of people who must have read that manuscript, did anyone say, hey, maybe take that line out? I guess not."
"What is the line, though?" said panelist Mike Barnicle. "She took the dog on a death march. She walked the dog to a gravel pit, then shot the dog. That's intent, that's like malicious intent. It's like walking a dog to the dog's death, incredible that anyone would have not looked at that manuscript and said, 'Hey, this is a death march for you if you print that in your book.' But she did."
"Then she did it to a goat, she didn't just stop at the dog," added co-host Mika Brzezinski. "If you read on in the book, she decided that while she's at it, while she's on this murderous rampage of killing innocent pets, 'I'm just going to go after the family goat because I don't like how the goat butts up against the kids and made their clothes dirty."'
"Wait, she did it to a goat?" Barnicle interjected. "That's a chore. She's a serial killer!"
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