The latest wild conspiracy theory over Kristi Noem’s executed dog

Not even Kristi Noem is taking the bait on this one.

Newsmax’s Eric Bolling was the latest to roll out a wild theory on how a tale of Noem shooting a puppy to death and a separate anecdote that turned out to be false about meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“I’ve also written a couple of books and I know how the process works, you write some chapters. You don’t write the whole book at once. You write a chapter or two, you send it to the editor and they edit, they read it, they add, they subtract. And here’s my question, the editor … was she possibly a plant, a liberal plant?” Bolling asked her in a TV interview.

No, the buck always stops with me. I take my own full responsibility. I wrote this book and I take responsibility for what’s in it,” Noem responded.

Bolling wasn’t the first person to toss that theory out there.

Kimberly Guilfoyle came to Noem’s defense with a similar explanation.

“I just can’t imagine that because there’s a forever home for all animals. I don’t know what happened. Maybe somebody slipped that in and she didn’t see it. I don’t know, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, so that’s a tough one to take,” Guilfoyle said during a recent TV interview.

Noem, a potential running mate for Donald Trump, wrote in her book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” she shot Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting.

The tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor.

She has also since walked back a claim that she met the North Korean dictator.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.