Revealed: Publisher had to stop Kristi Noem bragging about shooting puppy in another book

Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) wanted to tell the puppy murder story in a previous book — and her publishing team had to stop her, according to a new report.

According to Politico, her first book's draft also discussed the story. "Then, as now, Noem wanted the story in because it showed a decisive person who was unwilling to be bound by namby-pamby niceties, while others on the team — which included agents, editors and publicists at Hachette Book Group’s prestige Twelve imprint, and a ghostwriter — saw it as a bad-taste anecdote that would hurt her brand. The tale was ultimately cut, according to two people involved with the project."

In her newest book, the story made it in the way she had wanted to tell it — Noem recounted how she "hated" her 14-month-old German wirehair pointer puppy Cricket, whom she described as "untrainable," not following orders on hunts and attacking a neighbor's chickens. She then took the dog to a gravel pit and shot it in front of a startled group of construction workers, and later brought a goat from her farm to the same place to shoot it as well.

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The story caused widespread outrage even among many Republicans and Trump supporters.

One source reported that even President Donald Trump himself, who has a reputation for not liking dogs, was "disgusted" by Noem's actions — but this appears to be contradicted by newly released Mar-a-Lago audio of Trump continuing to praise her after the news came out.

"The ongoing Noem spectacle is, to put it mildly, not the kind of roll-out that typically accompanies a look-at-me book by a national-politics wannabe," the report continued.

"But it is an interesting window into the Washington industry of pre-campaign memoirs — where the goal of defining a brand is often at odds with the goal of producing interesting copy, and where nobody puts a great deal of emphasis on quality control or literary drama."