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217

GOP senator compares Kristi Noem's DHS leadership to that time she shot her own dog (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 13 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., tore into the homeland security secretary at a hearing, saying he will hold up Trump's nominees until he gets answers from her department.

During a tense public hearing Tuesday, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign over her handling of the deadly Minneapolis immigration operation.

And he blasted her for killing her dog, which she had described in her memoir as "untrainable," as well as a goat. Tillis, of North Carolina, argued that killing the animals reflected bad judgment and compared it to DHS’ fatal shootings of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.

Then he senator threatened to block many of Donald Trump’s nominees until he gets answers to questions he has posed to the administration about Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Charlotte.

top 28 comments

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[–] Didntdoit71@feddit.online 3 points 1 hour ago

Wow. Republican Grows Balls After Announcing That He Quits... Dear Thom, fuck you anyway. Deep hate from a Charlottean in North Carolina. I may be forced to leave my home country to protect my teenage boys from you and your party's illegal wars to protect pedophiles. You're okay with killing our children so your orange god doesn't go to prison...so, just go home, Thom... and maybe hang yourself for supporting Trump all these years. You helped strangle this country to death in your march for an all-powerful GOP.

[–] ravenaspiring@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 hours ago

“The passage where you talk about killing a dog that was 14 months old — I train dogs. All right? And you are a farmer; you should know better. You should know that if you’re going out to a hunting lodge and you’re putting pheasants out and you’re putting dogs out, you don’t take a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years,” Tillis told Noem.

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training. And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices?

“But my point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment — not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” he continued. “We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that.”

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 24 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

LOL, but she was just describing rural life, something no liberals could possibly ever know or understand. Sometimes you just have to shoot your dog in the face, and because you already have your bloodlust going, you have to shoot your goat, too.

I mean, there are just no other options for rural livin'. It's nasty stuff that requires a cool and calm rational mind and no liberals could ever, ever understand, because no liberals ever existed outside the Big City.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Damn those Big City libs. Life ain't all commuting like a commie and making money by jackin it at a desk in front of the secretary. In the real world, ya can't just be a chickenshit little bitch afraid to get dirt under yer nails. Ya gotta do the right thing and make hard decisions!

Do ya shoot the dog, or do ya shoot the neighbor's dog? Do ya claim he was vicious and untrainable, or do ya blame it on rabies? Do ya use the ol' reliable glock, or do ya take the hard work to pull the good stuff and grab the semi-auto from the truck? Libs--they just don't hafta make those kinds of choices!

[+] testfactor@lemmy.world -8 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I get that you're mocking her, but genuinely sometimes, when you're particularly rural, you do in fact have to shoot a dog.

Where I grew up, there was no animal control. There was no one to call if there were loose animals. Combine that with the fact that it was an area where people would just dump unwanted animals, and we had a real feral dog problem.

When you have dangerous dogs show up a couple of times a month, and your only other option to get rid of them is to try and catch them, load them up in a crate, drive them an hour into town, just to give them to a pound that's gonna put them down anyway; yeah, sometimes you kinda don't have much other option but to shoot them.

My dad put down a good few dogs when I was young. It wasn't something he liked doing. But when you have young kids running around, you can't just let a bunch of feral dogs run loose.

What should he have done? What was the "correct" decision for him to make?

[–] beelzebum@lemmy.world 13 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

this wasn’t a feral dog. It was a young dog that she had not trained for hunting, which she took on a hunt and it got anxious so she shot it.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago

Did you not see the part where I said I wasn't defending Noam and that what she did wasn't what I'm describing?

Two things can be true. Noam can be a bad person, and people in rural areas can, unfortunately, sometimes have to put down feral dogs.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Now I'm just curious where you lived that there was no shelter to take unwanted dogs to. That's what we did and I'm originally from BFE.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

I grew up on 150 acres in a very rural part of the Southern US.

This could also be an age thing though. There is now a county animal control and some animal shelters. That wasn't true in the early 90s.

But the area has grown a bunch since then too. What used to be farmland for ages has started to turn into suburbs and subdivisions. I'm sure what I've described is still pretty normative in places that are still underdeveloped.

[–] limer@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Here in my area, of rural east Texas, the only safe shelters for dogs, that I know about, are already at capacity and cannot take new ones.

I’m all for finding homes for stray dogs or even having people feed community strays.

But life is complicated and there are no nice options to deal with some dogs who pack up and become a menace.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

I grew up in the middle of nowhere in East Texas as well, probably an hour and a half into Texas from Shreveport. I can say this has been true since at least the 80s that I'm aware of. It's not "lol, can't train 'em gotta put 'em down!" and more "I guess I could call the sheriff and he'll come out and maybe accidentally shoot my dog along with this pack of aggressive, possibly diseased animals who may be gone in the half hour it'll take him to get here or I can make sure my dog and kid are safe." I guess there was also "I'll go ahead and risk my life and start the treatment for rabies and try to catch this pack of feral animals and take them to Dallas where I'm sure the second I turn my back they're going to be put down because they've been out here killing and that's all they know."

We had wandering strays that never caused a problem. We did have a problem with meth heads dumping failed fighting dogs. The only time it got to be a real gray area was when you weren't sure whether a dog had a disease that caused balance issues or if one had just tangled with a wild animal and was hurt. But a hurt dog is also a dangerous dog and you're still running up against waiting half an hour for a sheriff that might show up blasting every animal in sight whether it's gone or not and possibly having your family hurt.

Life is complicated. And it sucks. And some of us are just out here doing the best we know how. Except Kristi Noem apparently who hated that dog and didn't care for it or train it properly, blamed the dog for her failure, then decided she also hated a goat, missed the kill shot, and had planned so poorly that she had to go reload and come back for round 2. That's fucking incompetence and spite, not protecting her kids and her neighbor's chickens. Luckily she surely won't bring that kind of incompetence and hatefulness to any job she might do with the government. Surely not, no way.

[–] droopy4096@lemmy.ca -4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

lots of conjectures and assumptions. none of which is true. Rural != Cruel or Irresponsible. Read any book from a reputable modern farmer and then you'll understand. Has nothing to do with liberal. Most books are written by individuals self identified as conservative or libertarian. Shirking your responsibility and killing an animal 'cause you felt so is insane. I don't know a single farmer who'd do such thing and I know more than few.

[–] SayJess@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Pretty sure you just ate the onion

[–] droopy4096@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago

love them onions 😁

[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 37 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

It sounds like he's more mad about the dog than the people in MN

[–] cmbabul@lemmy.world 0 points 45 minutes ago (1 children)

Right? He’s not wrong that it was fucked up for her to kill said dog but that’s hardly the point

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 points 31 minutes ago

It is extremely relevant that she was known to have horrible deadly judgement before being given this role and that's obviously his point. And it is a good point.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago

Or maybe he's expressing frustration that someone with her extremely sketchy life experience would ever get into a cabinet position, let alone one where she has essentially power over guns aimed at human beings.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago

Whatever it takes.

[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe he knows more dogs than people in MN.

[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 hours ago

Maybe he thinks dogs are being eaten by Somali immigrants in MN. #GOPthings

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

How much of this is for show? Republicans always bark until they get their bone

[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 16 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

He's not running for reelection so he's kinda free to do whatever he likes until he's replaced. I'm from NC and I don't like or respect the man but I appreciate that at least when nothing is on the line he'll speak truth to power. He has been very critical of trump if I remember right

[–] Dultas@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

He did get censured during Trump's first term by the Republican party I think for comments about Trump. But yeah I don't like his policies either and have written his office numerous times and without fail the auto reply is exactly the opposite policy decision to what I'm writing about.

[–] arin@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Oh so that's why us citizens got murdered in plain daylight with multiple witness and multiple phone evidence recordings.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Tillis, who has clashed with Trump and his administration over numerous issues and nominees, isn’t seeking re-election this fall.

“That’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” Tillis told Noem. “If I don’t get an answer to these questions, if I don’t get an answer that you’ve had a month to respond to, and the remaining ones, as of today, I’ll be informing leadership that I’m putting a hold on any en bloc nominations until I get a response.”

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 7 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

We need more than resignation. We need real punishments.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago

The french had some ideas on that...