Sick Reason Trump Tapped ICE Barbie for Top DHS Job Exposed
The president was reportedly encouraged by Noem’s controversial history.
An incident in Kristi Noem’s personal life may have helped her land a prominent position in President Donald Trump’s administration.
In her 2024 memoir,No Going Back, Noem admits to shooting her 14-month-old puppy, Cricket, claiming the animal was “aggressive.”
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, calling Cricket “a good-for-nothing.” Regarding the fatal shot she fired 20 years earlier, Noem writes, “It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary.” She then buried the puppy in a gravel pit.
New excerpts from the forthcoming book Illegal Procedures: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program, by NBC News correspondent Julia Ainslie, claim that Trump had previously considered nominating Noem for vice president in 2024 before ultimately choosing J.D. Vance.
Noem, 54, was removed from the list of candidates after the publication of her book in May 2024 and the intense controversy that followed the revelation of the cold-blooded killing of her puppy.
According to an article in The Atlantic, Ainsley’s book suggests that many observers believed the outrage and resentment generated by the incident would jeopardize her chances of securing a position in the Trump administration.
However, the book reveals that “Trump saw precisely this personal detail as an asset for the Homeland Security Secretary, and it was one of the reasons he chose her,” according to the magazine.
Noem was sworn in as Homeland Security Secretary in January of last year and became the public face of controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations across the United States. She previously served as governor of South Dakota.
The killing of the dog continues to haunt Noem and was a recurring theme in a parody of her work as head of ICE operations in an episode of the television series “South Park.”
The hit comedy sketch portrayed Noem as a glamorous ICE agent obsessed with photos, euthanizing puppies, Botox, and arresting anyone suspected of being Latino.
The sketch ended with a caricature of Noem firing indiscriminately in a pet store, where she reportedly fired more than 60 shots, killing puppies.
Noem discussed the death of her dog, Cricket, on the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, aimed at Trump supporters, with Miranda Devine last September.
The Republican justified the euthanasia of the puppy by claiming she had also killed a “disgusting, smelly, rotten” goat that “liked to harass” her children.
Noem told Devine, “The dog was intentionally killing animals for fun, tearing chickens apart, and then it tried to bite and attack me. It happens sometimes, and keeping children and people safe is paramount.” Noem added, “At that time, we had young children around every day… I knew I had to take responsibility for the situation.”
The Homeland Security Secretary said she included the incident involving the dog being shot in her book for the sake of transparency regarding the “difficult decisions” she had to make, and that she knew the incident was being used against her.
“I love animals,” she said. “I’ve always had dogs, and I still have one that goes everywhere with me. It was a difficult situation.”
It has long been known that Trump has a contentious relationship with dogs. He is the first president since William McKinley not to own a dog, and the first since Andrew Johnson to have no pets in the White House. He has also used the phrase “like a dog” pejoratively, notably saying “choked like a dog” to describe Mitt Romney, and “died like a dog” to describe the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Ironically, a U.S. military dog participated in the operation to capture or kill Baghdadi, and Trump mistakenly identified its sex as male.
