Welp. You may have noticed that no more interviews with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem are being advertised on television. It has been so for a few days.
The book tour has been canceled. It is hard to imagine a politician with a book to push crashing and burning as quickly as Noem did. She chose to do CBS’s Face the Nation for the first interview for her memoir No Going Back. At the time, I thought that was an odd choice. Margaret Brennan, the host of that show, is arrogantly partisan and smirks at Republican guests.
By the time Noem did the interview, the story of Cricket the Dog was out and creating a buzz everywhere. Then another story popped up that would cause Noem problems – her alleged meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Brennan tried to get to the bottom of that story but Noem refused to give any details. All she would say was that she has met with many world leaders.
Noem went on to say some editing was being done on the book.
What made the Kim Jong-un story really bizarre was that Noem read the audio version of her memoir. How did she read that part of the book and not take it out? The meeting allegedly happened when she was a member of Congress. If a meeting with the dictator had happened with the delegation she was traveling with, we would have known about it through the media at the time. It didn’t happen.
So, things were pretty tough for Noem and I have to say I was not feeling much sympathy for her. The bad judgment of putting down a dog on her farm and repeating the story in her book to show she’s tough was enough to put me off. But, then, the story about Kim Jong-un was just too much.
But wait, there’s more.
It turns out another story has come forth as a whopper. Noem tells a tale of canceling a meeting with French President Macron. I guess he is one of the many world leaders we are to believe she has met. Macron’s government denies the story. There is no record of a scheduled meeting at the Elysee Palace and no one invited her to meet with Macron.
“While in Paris, I was slated to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron,” Noem wrote in her book “No Going Back.” “However, the day before we were to meet he made what I considered a very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press. So, I decided to cancel.”
This alleged meeting was in November, not some years ago when she was in Congress. It was just a few months ago.
Her spokesperson did some clean-up for the governor.
When reached for comment Friday, a spokesperson for Noem said that “the Governor was invited to sit in President Macron’s box for the Armistice Day Parade at Arc de Triomphe.”
“Following his anti-Israel comments, she chose to cancel,” Ian Fury, the governor’s chief of communications, said in a statement, while adding that Macron “did not end up attending, either.”
Is this the last bogus story in her memoir? The book was ghostwritten and apparently, that means Noem didn’t do any of the writing. But, she or an assistant would have had to provide the material for her memoir.
Noem canceled television appearances on CNN and Fox News. I think her interview with Fox Business Channel’s Stuart Varney may have been her last one. He wasn’t letting her slide on the stories and she became irritated during the interview.
Trump acknowledged Noem’s predicament. Last week he said, “She had a rough couple of days. I will say that.”
I don’t think she is on the short list of Trump’s running mates. What a mess and it’s all self-inflicted.