Donald Trump welcomes Kristi Noem back into his ranks after puppy killing scandal

It turns out that killing your puppy – and the unsolicited admission – is not in total political suicide.

Kristi Noem will be the keynote speaker at a town hall organized by Donald Trump's team this weekend. It will be her first significant campaign appearance since she detailed how she killed her 14-month-old wire-haired pointer, Cricket.

Noem, 52, will travel to Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday to headline the political event. It appears to be a relatively low-key campaign stop to welcome Noem back into the fold. The appearance will take place at 3 p.m. on a busy college football Saturday in the heart of the Deep South. The free event will be held at the Charles H. Morris Center, which has seating for 300 people.

Other than the name “Team Trump’s Agenda 47 Policy Tour with Governor Kristi Noem in Savannah, Georgia,” few details about the event have been announced so far.

Noem posted to X on Monday that she was traveling to Philadelphia to attend the debate between Trump and Kamala Harris on Tuesday night.

“Tomorrow's debate is a defining moment for our nation,” she said. “We will hear two opposing visions for our country. President Trump will share his vision of strength and prosperity – in contrast to Kamala's radical Marxism. I will be at the debate to [Trump].”

Noem largely disappeared from the political spotlight in May after excerpts from her second autobiography, No turning backwent viral and was widely investigated. She wrote that she killed her puppy Cricket after he had a serious accident while pheasant hunting and killed some chickens the same day.

Noem wrote that she “hated that dog” and that he was “less than worthless,” so she shot him in a gravel pit.

She also wrote that a few minutes later, she also shot her family's goat – with two shots after the first one failed – which was “mean and nasty” and loved to chase her three children.

The self-inflicted scandal – along with the blatant lie that she had met Kim Jong Un (which was also in her book) – slowed Noem's entire advance in Trump's vice presidential election, which ultimately ended with the election of JD Vance.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Noem has remained largely quiet – at least by her standards – since the scandal broke. She praised Trump in a 10-minute speech on the first day of the RNC, before the former president made his first appearance on his own.

Trump never condemned Noem's killing of Cricket, but he alluded to the scandal several times as outrage – and memes – about it reached their peak.

“She had a bad week,” he told radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton in May of the ordeal. “We all have bad weeks.”