What it didn’t do, of course, was spark a weeklong news cycle — and a round of obituaries for that same political future — by including a tale about Noem leading a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named Cricket to a gravel pit and shooting him to death after he ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens.

WASHINGTON — South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem in a new interview defended her decision to kill her dog Cricket, saying that it was a dangerous animal and that she was protecting her children.

Kristi Noem, speaking about an anecdote in her book describing a meeting with Kim Jong-un Cricket who? The news of Noem shooting her 14-month-old dog in a gravel pit is old hat. Instead, the book prerelease scandal catching more attention over the past few days has been Noem’s anecdote about meeting with the North Korean dictator.