On this date in 2022, as well as 2023, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled of the sitting Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who was first elected to that office in 2018 who came on the scene in the South Dakota state legislature in the 2006 elections, and after two terms, riding the crest of the Tea Party Wave to Washington D.C. to spend four terms in Congress serving as the U.S. House Representative for South Dakota’s At-Large Congressional District, supporting all the worst legislation the GOP put forth for three terms in office.
But it has been since Kristi Noem became a governor, how she truly started to make headlines… mostly by catering to the whims and malignant narcissism of one Donald Trump whenever he would abscond to her state for a hate rally, and to incessantly try to manipulate his way onto having his butt-ugly mug added to Mt. Rushmore. As a former beauty queen, she’s certainly his type. Noem tried to placate his endless ego about Rushmore by presenting him with a miniature statue of what it might look like, and yes, he has it down at Mar-a-Lago today.
And at first, in say 2019, that sort of sucking up didn’t have any major consequences on the lives of people in her state… there were signs she might be in over her head, like how her administration spent about half a million dollars on an ad campaign to combat methamphetamine addiction that came up with the tagline, “Meth: We’re On It”.
But in 2020, Kristi Noem’s sycophantic obedience towards the Dotard-in-Chief became truly lethal. The Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, and Trump wanted to campaign for president like it wasn’t happening. He needed Republican Governors who were fanatical enough to keep his rallies unrestricted, unmasked, not-socially distanced… ignoring public health advisories to stop the spread of the virus, specifically at a July 4th rally that had some pretty blatant white nationalist vibes. Noem was there to foolishly accommodate him, visit after visit, and went so far as to advocate for the non-effective treatment of hydroxychloroquine.
Meanwhile, she also diverted funds from the federal government meant for pandemic relief towards state tourism advertising, trying to make sure that events like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally were packed (and thus became super-spreader events). And again, she’s enough of a fanatic that she not only ignored the warnings prior to Sturgis 2020… she is stupid enough to repeat the same idiocy, and did it again in 2020, causing another septupling of Covid-19 rates in her state.
She refused to allow unemployment payments to workers displaced by the pandemic, and while forcing people back to work has definitely not helped mitigate the problem, her spreading anti-mask and anti-vaccination talking points doesn’t help.
Noem’s also unflinchingly anti-choice, defending her state’s ban on abortion upon the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court, and defending its use even in the example of a 10 year old child abuse victim who had to fly out of state to receive an abortion.
And yet, as all of her campaign assistance to Donald Trump didn’t help him beat Joe Biden in 2020, Gov. Noem baselessly jumped to help her guy spread his “Big Lie” that the election was somehow stolen from him through “mass voter fraud” that she provides no evidence of, and also, Donald Trump easily won South Dakota.
But alas, her corrupt ideology is not limited simply to doing Donald Trump’s bidding. She also has abused power in office to try to get her daughter a license as a realtor, calling the state employee who gave her a failed grade to her office, specifically, and forcing her to let her daughter an extra chance to correct her wrong answers to be granted the license anyway. Oh, and that official had their retirement forced only months after this unorthodox testing session, but tipped off the local media about where to send a FOIA request to get the dirt. Bizarrely, when a ruling on her abuse of power was made by South Dakota’s ethics board, they decided to keep their judgment “secret”. And that’s hardly her only corruption scandal, as she’s under investigation for abusing state airplanes at taxpayer expense, for such important business as flying home for her teenage son’s high school prom.
Kristi Noem has been working to try and raise her profile, perhaps trying to cement her status as a potential contender for a VP nomination or perhaps 2024 presidential candidate by, what else, bullying the LGBTQ community in ways such as banning trans-women from women’s sports in South Dakota, and also coming out in opposition to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. Because who better to stand up for the sanctity of marriage than a woman who has allegedly been running around behind her husband’s back to bang Corey Lewandowski, right?
Gov. Noem also was shown to be a gaslighting twit back in April of 2023 when she gave her speech at the NRA Convention and claimed that its members were diverse and weren’t just a bunch of “old white guys”, only to have a camera cut to a crowd shot of… a bunch of old white guys.
We’re not going to be surprised if Kristi Noem throws her own hat into the ring for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, since she won re-election in 2022 and will be able to fall back into her last two years as governor if she loses the nomination. Of course, the GOP are probably doing the calculus after losing in every election since Trump came along and even worse since the conservative Supreme Court and all three Trump-approved Justices overturned Roe v. Wade and are thinking a female VP would help out a lot… then again, it might not considering she’s so anti-choice that she’s threatened to have charges filed against any woman who takes a morning-after-pill or other abortion medication. Still, trying to get the nomination would be the exact opportunistic thing to do since Donald Trump’s star has fallen enough that she won, and someone who has put partisan politics over scientific advisements that would save lives the past few years and is brazenly corrupt is certainly on brand for the Republican Party.
One Year Ago, January 2nd, 2023: Kristi Noem (SD)… 2023 Update
Two Years Ago, January 2nd, 2022: Kristi Noem (SD)… Original Profile
Three Years Ago, January 2nd, 2021: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2021 Update
Four Years Ago, January 2nd, 2020: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2020 Update
Five Years Ago, January 2nd, 2019: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2019 Update
Six Years Ago, January 2nd, 2018: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2018 Update
Seven Years Ago, January 2nd, 2017: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2017 Update
Eight Years Ago, January 2nd, 2016: Matthew Hill (TN)… 2016 Update
Nine Years Ago, January 2nd, 2015: Matthew Hill (TN)… Original Profile