Profile in Terror: Kristi Noem

[Tennesseer]

No satire today (though the day is young).

The Borowitz Report

Profile in Terror: Kristi Noem

Meet a top Republican VP prospect. She’s Trump without the empathy.

Where were you when you first heard of Sarah Palin? Joe Biden, who was running for vice president, was on a campaign plane when he learned that John McCain had chosen her as his running mate. “Who’s Sarah Palin?” Biden asked. Like Joe, most of us didn’t know anything about her, so we weren’t prepared for what came next: the horrifying reveal that a blithering idiot might someday possess the nuclear codes.

To avoid a repeat of that traumatic experience, I’m here to warn you about another GOP vice-presidential contender: Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota.

Noem first won election to Congress in 2010, when the Tea Party ushered in such other luminaries as Marco Rubio and Mike Lee. (Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party’s Senate candidate in Delaware, flamed out amid allegations that she was a practicing witch.) Though not a card-carrying Tea Partier, Noem courted the group’s members, who enjoyed brandishing protest signs featuring Barack Obama with a Hitler moustache.

During her early years in Congress, Noem seemed like a garden-variety right-winger, but after the 2016 election she heeded the call of opportunism and became an angry drunk karaoke version of Donald J. Trump. She hasn’t tried to be as sociopathic as her death-cult’s leader—she’s tried to be more sociopathic. And her success demands that we stand back and marvel.

Consider, for example, the two politicians’ speeches at the NRA’s annual meeting last year in Indianapolis. “With me at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no one will lay a finger on your firearms,” Trump vowed, drawing predictable applause. Noem, by contrast, shared this nugget about her one-year-old grandchild, Addie: “She already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles, too.” Kristi’s homespun yarn about her granddaughter’s lethal weaponry brought down the house—because, as everyone knows, the only thing that stops a bad one-year-old with a gun is a good one-year-old with a gun.

It's also illuminating to compare Trump’s record in office with Noem’s—specifically, during the pandemic. It was hard to outdo Trump, whose leadership mainly consisted of urging us to ingest bleach, but Kristi managed. In 2020, she scorned the warnings of scientists and invited bikers from across the country to a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. At her beckoning, half a million pathogenic hosts arrived on their thundering hogs. Steve Harwell, whose band Smash Mouth entertained at the superspreader event, whipped up his audience by shouting, “Now we're all here together tonight. And we're being human once again. Fuck that COVID shit.”

Alas, fucking that COVID shit came at a price. “South Dakota took the lead for the worst COVID state in America and the third-worst mortality rate in the entire world,” The New York Times reported. According to a National Institutes of Health study, the post-Sturgis outbreak jacked up health care costs by as much as $8.7 billion. Bizarrely, Noem crowed about her management of the pandemic at the following year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). “I don’t know if you agree with me, but Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot,” she said, earning a standing ovation. Fauci was probably astonished to discover that there was a Republican politician dumber than Rand Paul.

Rest of article here: Profile in Terror: Kristi Noem

[Opti]

She is worth writing about, but I hated this line - She’s Trump without the empathy. Yes, she allowed the Sturgis motorcycle rally to do their annual rally. Trump gave rallies and held conferences while Covid positive and made politicians sick and at least one died. She wanted tourist money much like DeSantis with the open Florida beaches. She's not good, but Trump is doing far too well at destroying America. 

I hope we can avoid them both as much as possible going forward.

[billisonboard]

Agree re: writing about. I hated the title. First, if everything is "terror" than (or is it then?) nothing is terror. What she has done is not terrorism. Misusing it in this way is desensitizing. At the same time, it sharply increases division. She is simply a politician who I disagree with on policy issues. As such, I don't support her election to any office. A terrorist needs to be dealt with differently. 

[dondubble]

Apr 14, 2024 11:51:48 GMT -5 billisonboard said:

Agree re: writing about. I hated the title. First, if everything is "terror" than (or is it then?) nothing is terror. What she has done is not terrorism. Misusing it in this way is desensitizing. At the same time, it sharply increases division. She is simply a politician who I disagree with on policy issues. As such, I don't support her election to any office. A terrorist needs to be dealt with differently. 

Then😎

[djAdvocate]

Apr 14, 2024 10:37:08 GMT -5 Opti said:

She is worth writing about, but I hated this line - She’s Trump without the empathy. Yes, she allowed the Sturgis motorcycle rally to do their annual rally. Trump gave rallies and held conferences while Covid positive and made politicians sick and at least one died. She wanted tourist money much like DeSantis with the open Florida beaches. She's not good, but Trump is doing far too well at destroying America. 

I hope we can avoid them both as much as possible going forward.

i agree with Opti.  what Trump did was worse.

he let the virus spread because it was hitting places like NY, not ND.  it was hitting liberal strongholds.  so, he ignored it, thinking it would only spread in urban areas, and ignoring the science.

what Noem did was ignorant, but it was not vindictive.  Trump's plan backfired when this turned out to be the mother of all flus.  it killed one million Americans UNNECESSARILY.  he is responsible for more deaths than any president in history.  and for the worst possible reason.