Kristi Noem Is No Stranger To Figuratively Shooting Herself In The Foot With Trump

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Kristi Noem's rise and fall has been a wild ride, and while some might blame the big boss for her fall from grace (President Donald Trump is the one who officially kicked Noem to the curb, after all), the former DHS secretary has largely been responsible for her own misfortune. While the Republican politician is as trigger happy as they come, she has, inadvertently, aimed a figurative gun at herself and her career on a few occasions, leaving Noem with a hastily made-up job title and no aspirations for the next election cycle. 

When the Trump staffer attended what would be her last Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in March 2026, she was interrogated by Senator John Kennedy about the $220 million in taxpayer money she spent to fund an ad campaign that showcased Noem cosplaying as a cowgirl while condescendingly informing immigrants that self-deporting was in their best interests. Kennedy questioned how she deemed this inordinate amount of money in line with her promises that the DHS would do away with wasteful spending. 

Noem was unable to wriggle herself out of this one, and when Kennedy asked whether the president had approved it, she eventually answered, "Mmhmm, yes," per CNN. But Trump didn't want to play ball, outright denying that he had ever approved the ad campaign. Out of all the controversial things Noem has ever done, throwing the president under the bus was the final straw. Kennedy told NBC News that Trump "was mad as a murder hornet" after the hearing. The divisive politician reiterated that he didn't approve the ad campaign, reasoning, "I spent less money than that to become president. I didn't know about it." 

One would hope that someone like Kristi Noem would never be allowed near animals again after she boasted about killing her young hunting dog in her memoir, "No Going Back," because the puppy apparently killed her neighbor's chickens. The former South Dakota governor used the shocking story of shooting her dog (and a goat, on the same day!) as an example of her willingness to do what needs to be done no matter how nasty it might be, something she argued translated to her political career. Noem's book appeared to be a 272-page résumé to convince Donald Trump that she would be his perfect vice presidential pick. Instead of seeing her as a ruthless go-getter who would do anything to win, however, Trump decidedly found the whole dog-killing saga too controversial.

"She was already unlikely to be picked as VP but had a shot," an anonymous Trump ally informed the New York Post in April 2024. "After this, it's just impossible." The source went on to admit that although the former "Apprentice" host is hardly a dog lover, even he knew his constituents would not stand for a vice president who is a self-proclaimed dog killer. When Trump was asked about the scandal in a subsequent interview, he acknowledged that Noem was having "a bad week," noting, "Couple of rough stories, there's no question about it," per CNN. Trump alluded that, perhaps, Noem didn't doublecheck what her ghost writer wrote about it before the book went to print. "You have ghost writers do it, they help you, and they, in this case, didn't help too much," the president surmised.