South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem was mocked by Fox News hosts Greg Gutfeld and Dana Perino after canceling an appearance on the right-wing network at the last minute.
Gutfeld and Perino decided to "interview" Noem anyway, with Perino stepping in to play the role of Noem as Gutfeld interviewed her about her new book, No Going Back.
Noem's decision to back out of the interview comes amid controversy over Noem's admission in her book that she killed her "untrainable" 14-month-old puppy, Cricket, because it wasn't good at hunting and was too excitable. She was also called out during a heated back-and-forth this week by Newsmax host Rob Finnerty after falsely claiming she'd had an encounter with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Given all this, the two Fox hosts couldn't resist making fun of her, with Gutfeld saying that Noem had canceled her appearance "the one time" he actually read a guest's book. As severe storms have recently battered the state, Noem blamed the weather for her cancelation, but Gutfeld wasn't convinced.
He proceeded to make crude jokes at Noem's expense about the dog she killed:
"I don't believe it. I think it's a little late to keep her on a short leash. I hope she'll reconsider but I'm not going to sit up and beg. At any rate, every dog has his day, it's just not May 7, 2024. I'm not going to let them waste my time so we're moving forward with the interview."
Then he pivoted:
"Standing in for Noem is somebody she wished she'd listened to before she ever wrote the stupid book: Dana Perino."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
After Gutfeld asked her if she'd actually "written the book yourself," Perino-as-Noem responded:
“You know, that’s a great question for someone who wrote the book, and I don’t think I will dignify your question with a response. There are so many other important issues in the world, like animal cruelty.”
Gutfeld then asked "Noem" if she'd actually read her own book, given that the real Noem had worked on the audiobook, to which Perino-as-Noem answered:
"Thank you for reading my book. I said some words that were written about me, and they were in a certain order of ― they call them sentences, and so I read those aloud. I don’t know if that means I read the book." ...
"Little known fact: Another one of my dogs, his name was Ghost Writer. I killed him this morning."
Amid laughter in the studio, Gutfeld asked Perino-as-Noem if she's "bothered" by the fact that the stories about her dog and the alleged meeting with Kim Jong Un have "overshadowed" the book's release.
Perino-as-Noem joked that she's being "overshadowed by the governor of the lesser Dakota, Doug Burgum, and apparently I'm off the list for [former President Donald Trump's] VP."
When Gutfeld joked that Burgum "only kills rattlesnakes," Perino-as-Noem said:
"I really think the lamestream media should focus on that because the rattlesnake is not something that we should be killing because they actually kill the rats and so I actually know more about ecology than the governor of North Dakota."
Gutfeld then asked the following question:
"Do you regret anything including the dog story? It's been reported you were told not to include it."
Perino-as-Noem said:
"You know, what I regret is... I regret that I was in Germany in the '80s doing movies. I regret that. I didn't include that in the book and now I regret not including that in the book."
"I also regret not canceling on you on Saturday so I didn't waste your time reading a book that I was not going to come on to do an interview about."
After giving Perino-as-Noem an enthusiastic "Amen," Gutfeld turned to the camera and said:
"And that's how you do it, Kristi. Don't go away, we'll be right back."
Even Fox News can't stand behind Noem—and people piled on more criticism.
Even conservatives appreciated Perino's performance.
The media storm around Noem has threatened her viability as a potential running mate for Trump. Political prognosticators believe her admission about killing her dog and the resulting bipartisan outrage have essentially torpedoed her chances of being on the ticket.
In an analysis for The Washington Post, staff writer Aaron Blake suggested Republicans have turned on Noem because "she's become a perceived liability for the brand." Blake called the GOP's response to Noem's admissions "quite an un-conservative media thing to do in the Trump era" given "Trump’s own penchant for saying oodles of bizarre and false things."
Blake said the answer is simply that "conservative media and the GOP can ignore and try to cover for plenty — until they decide you’ve become a problem for the red team," citing cases of previously ousted Republican members of Congress including Madison Cawthorn and George Santos, both of whom told multiple lies and fabrications about their respective biographies.