Trump running mate contender retracts claim she met Kim Jong-un
South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem has confirmed her new memoir will be “adjusted” to remove a claim that she once met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Ms Noem, who has been discussed as a potential running mate for former president Donald Trump, said she met Kim when she was a member of Congress.
The claim is the latest controversy surrounding her memoir, which is scheduled to be released on May 7.
There was a national backlash last month after extracts from the book published by news outlets revealed the governor once killed an aggressive 14-month-old dog named Cricket by shooting it in a gravel pit.
Ms Noem wrote of her apparent encounter with the authoritarian leader during a passage in which she described travelling to “many countries to meet with world leaders”, according to a review in The New York Times.
“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all),” she wrote.
After a wave of public scepticism over the claim, Ian Fury, Ms Noem’s spokesman, clarified it was one of two “small errors” that would be changed.
The book’s publisher also confirmed it would be removed from the print edition and “as soon as technically possible in the audio and eBook editions.”
Unfavourable scrutiny
When asked directly if she had met with North Korea’s authoritarian leader, Ms Noem told CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday that she was “not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders.”
However, she added: “This anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that was adjusted.”
The unfavourable scrutiny of Ms Noem’s memoir has fuelled speculation it could harm her chances of being picked as the Republican’s vice-presidential candidate.
However, CNN, citing Mr Trump’s advisors, said the governor had already fallen off his shortlist.
Ms Noem has since defended her killing of Cricket as a “hard decision” that she made to protect her children from an “extremely dangerous” dog.
She said the anecdote had been twisted by “fake news” and that the incident showed how capable she was of doing some of the more gruesome jobs in life when necessary.
On Sunday, she stoked the controversy further by saying Joe Biden, the US President, should put down his dog Commander because the animal had bitten Secret Service agents.
