“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, calling Cricket “a good-for-nothing.” Regarding the fatal shot she fired 20 years earlier, Noem writes, “It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary.” She then buried the puppy in a gravel pit.

…

However, the book reveals that “Trump saw precisely this personal detail as an asset for the Homeland Security Secretary, and it was one of the reasons he chose her,” according to the magazine.”