Cruella Kristi Noem and the Currency of Cruel on The American Right

Few things unite all Americans these days. Our consumption of media and the information we receive is siloed based on our need for information which confirms our existing biases and views. In another election year, we are more divided than ever. However, there is one thing that unites all Americans and that is our love of dogs. Americans love our loyal companions who are there with us through good times and bad. Dogs are a rare source of warmth and companionship in a world that is sorely lacking in both. Enter South Dakota Governor and Trump VP contender Kristi Noem. Earlier this week in a leaked excerpt of Noem’s forthcoming book, she described shooting and killing her dog, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer that Noem deemed too rambunctious and “untrainable.” Noem has attempted to spin this act of casual cruelty as an example of decisiveness and strong leadership. 

Voices on all sides of the political spectrum have universally condemned Noem from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris trolling Noem with a “heading into the weekend” post of each playing with dogs to election denying Trump enabler Kari Lake of Arizona who posed with her puppy and stated on X that “wishes we could take our pup on the campaign trail.” In true Trumpist fashion, Noem doubles down on an astonishing act of casual cruelty while publicly adding to her body count boasting “we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago.”

While Cruella Kristi may have old yellered her way out of being Trump’s Vice Presidential pick, her bizarre tale has once again highlighted the way that cruelty is viewed as an act of courage, decisiveness, and the true measure of leadership caliber on the right. In October 2018, Adam Serwer of The Atlantic pointedly noted that with Trump Republicans: The Cruelty Is The Point” and even the unthinkable act of arbitrarily shooting a helpless animal rather than finding it a new home or putting it through obedience training is spun into as Noem puts it, the “tough decision” of an “assertive leader.” 

As many Republicans and conservative leaders were quick to condemn Noem, it was hard not to remember many of the same voices cheering the kidnapping of children at the US Southern Border and celebrated when their nominee told supporters to “knock the crap out of” hecklers at a campaign rally in 2015, denigrated deceased service members as “suckers” and “losers,” and shrugged off a jury verdict finding him liable for sexual assault. Gone are the days of Bush era “compassionate conservatism.” Cruelty is currency in Trump’s Republican Party and the more it is brazenly flaunted, the more clout is gained in the MAGA upside down. However, cruelty is not just the basis of the rhetoric of the right, it is the goal of their policies. Sinking to a bottomless pit of immorality for the sole purpose of “owning the libs.” 

The fallout from the overturning of Roe v. Wade is another area where cruelty is the driving force of policy around reproductive freedom or lack thereof in states with Trumpy governors and MAGA cult legislators. Women in states with severe restrictions on abortion or outright bans have been forced to wait until they are septic or their lives are in danger before doctors wary of prosecution will provide the life saving care they need. Brittany Watts of Warren County Ohio after her miscarriage of “abuse of a corpse” and Kate Cox, a Texas woman forced to travel out of state when an unviable pregnancy threatened her life and extremist politicians determined that she did not meet the criteria for an abortion under the state’s exception clause. Trump stated just yesterday that he’d be open to red state “pregnancy monitors” tracking pregnancies across their state to make prosecuting women easier. 

Once upon a time, these sorts of stories, policies, and actions would shock us to the core enough to vote the perpetrators into political obscurity. However, the Trump era Republican Party treats policies and actions that are intentionally cruel as the way into the heart of MAGA and creates a permission structure for their followers to engage in the same cruelty as the leaders of their movement. The most extreme, of course, were the insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 who brutalized police officers and defiled the seat of democracy, threaten election workers and perceived adversaries such as Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan who was the subject of kidnapping plot, and my own neighbors in my hometown of Staten Island who hurled profanity and obscenities at migrant mothers and children at a newly opened shelter in the dead of night. 

The antidote to this new abnormal is to call it out where and when we see it, even if it makes us uncomfortable and to pursue accountability through the ballot box. It is cliche to say that this election will be about the kind of country we want to be. That is true in not just who we elect but the message it sends about our values. Will we drive up MAGA stock in cruelty currency by rewarding it with political power? Or will we lead the way in reviving shame from its MAGA induced coma to once again be a people that celebrate compassion and practice empathy? Our answer will come in time. Hopefully, we choose the latter. If nothing else, our dogs will thank us for it later.