With the nation still reeling from South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s literary boasts about shooting her puppy to death, Kimberly Guilfoyle has decided that now is the time to pull the trigger on promoting her new dog-themed children’s book.
Guilfoyle, an adviser on Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and now the fiancée of his son Don Jr., unveiled her forthcoming book The Princess & Her Pup on Monday. The work’s self-described “pro-God, pro-America” publisher says the book follows the story of “Princess Kimberly” who is “afraid of almost everything” until she “meets a little pup who’s scared too.”
Guilfoyle also announced on X that 10 percent of the proceeds from the book will go to supporting Furry Friends, a nonprofit “which provides complete care for abused and abandoned dogs and cats.”
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Social media users naturally couldn’t resist linking the book to the recent revelations about Noem, who has spent the past few days defending her decision to kill her pet pup, Cricket. A report last week said the Republican governor had recounted the episode—in which she dragged the 14-month-old dog to a gravel pit and shot her—in her own forthcoming book, No Going Back, as a means of showing (in her words) Noem’s willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it needs to be done.
Noem writes in her book that she killed the 14-month-old Cricket because she was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and was “less than worthless” as a hunting dog. “I hated that dog,” she added.
Her justification for the killing has gone down poorly, to say the least, with pretty much everyone. Not only has it outraged animal lovers, it also appears to have severely damaged her chances of being chosen by Trump as his 2024 running mate.
Amid the furor, Noem—who also confessed to botching the execution of a goat in the same gravel pit where she killed Cricket—has continued to cast the slaying as indicative of her ability to take tough decisions. On Sunday, she said she can understand “why some people are upset” about her killing of Cricket. “As I explained in the book, it wasn’t easy,” she wrote. “But often the easy way isn’t the right way.”
As the reactions to Guilfoyle’s book announcement show, Noem’s efforts to answer her critics don’t appear to be working.
“Are you sending an autographed copy to @GovKristiNoem?” one X user wrote in response to Guilfoyle’s announcement. “Dedicate it to Cricket.” Another asked if the kid’s book ends “with the pup in a gravel pit?” A third wondered if the work is a “remake of ‘The Governor Shot Her Pup’?”
