Gov. Noem bad-mouths Nikki Haley. Says Haley changes whenever ‘it suits her political agenda.’ Look who’s talking
Gov. Kristi Noem last September answered, “of course I would consider it” when queried about the possibility of joining Donald Trump on the GOP ticket for president in November. She was even more direct a few weeks later when she answered the same question by saying she’d accept the nomination “in a heartbeat.”
That clarified, it probably wasn’t real surprising that Noem just advanced her involvement in the chase for Trump’s running mate. Day before yesterday, reports The Hill, Noem was being interviewed on Newsmax-TV. To the question of whether it would be a mistake for Trump to pick Nikki Haley as his running mate, Noem answered “yes.”
Noem, in a predictable show of fealty to Trump, immediately took some of the edge off her put-down of Haley by adding, “but if he picked her, I would tell him I disagreed with him. But then I would support the ticket, because he’s still the president and the president still makes the decisions.”
If a Trump-Haley team came to pass, I doubt that Noem’s comment would sit very well with them, particularly after the they see the rest of Noem’s on-the-record blast against Haley. Said Noem, “I just, I’ve had a lot of disagreements with Nikki Haley over the years, and I just don’t know which Nikki Haley is going to show up every day … she’s a different person depending on whatever works for her political agenda.” Basically, Noem is saying that even though she thinks Haley is a two-faced hypocrite, she’ll support her if Trump puts her on his ticket.
I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but that scenario does seem a bit awkward.
Meantime, speaking of awkward, Kristi Noem (seen above in a public domain image posted on wikimedia commons) is one to talk about becoming a different person depending on whatever works for her political agenda.
For example, I remember when, upon attaining the governorship, she vowed, “I’m committed to building the most transparent administration South Dakota has ever seen.”
Right.
As we’ve since seen, that remark turned out to be a load. I’ve lived in this state since the ‘70s and I don’t recall any governor that was as isolated from the press as Noem has been.
A second example that comes to mind is Noem’s loudly proclaimed but empty promise to remove the state sales tax on food purchases, which was a major theme of her re-election campaign in 2022.
How did she follow through? Tepidly. She publicly scolded legislators for being “wrong” to reject her plan, which she could have advanced more forcefully by going over their heads and appealing directly to South Dakotans to put some pressure on their reps to pass a bill that Noem herself said had 75% support.
I don’t hear any noise from her administration that indicates this ultra-popular measure will be brought up in this year’s legislative session, which means that South Dakota will remain one of the most regressively taxed states in the nation.
I doubt that Noem will revert to her old and discarded promise to maintain transparency, but if, miraculously, she does allow some press access to her cloistered administration, it would be nice to see her response to a question about sales taxes on groceries.
Meantime, we have our governor ripping into Nikki Haley for “being a different person depending on whatever works for her political agenda.”
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam.
