It’s difficult to overlook Cricket’s murder, but Republican South Dakota Governor and Cruella DeVille-stan Kristi Noem has at least one major error in her book that questions her memory and her qualifications for office, the Associated Press reports. Noem relates a vivid story of “staring down” Kim Jong-un, calling him a “little tyrant,” in an encounter for which no other record exists.
“Through my tenure on the House Armed Services Committee,” Noem wrote, “I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders. 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).”
The problem: no record exists of Congresswoman Kristi Noem meeting Kim. In fact, there’s no record of an official Congressional delegation to North Korea since the GW Bush administration when bipartisan groups led by Republican Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon visited the isolationist country. (Trump’s then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim in October 2018).
Noem’s office acknowledges the discrepancy, saying the proof misidentified the world leader, but it’s unclear what other tyrannical world leader Noem might have met with while she was on the House Armed Services Committee from 2013 to 2015.
In her book, Noem also claimed that after she got angry with a “pro-Hamas” comment French President Emmanuel Macron allegedly made in November 2023–Noem doesn’t specify the comment in the book–that she canceled a meeting she was scheduled to have with Macron while she was in Paris. Macron’s office, however, doesn’t have a record of any meeting with Noem being scheduled.