Speaking to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem about her dog-killing incident, Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday suggested that President Biden should take action with his dog that has bit more than a dozen Secret Service agents.
“If somebody is biting people in large numbers like that,” Hannity said to the Republican on his Fox News show, “it's a sad thing to do, but at some point doesn't it become the responsible thing, for the safety of others, that you don't allow a dog at least around anybody else?”
Biden’s dog Commander, a German shepherd, bit people at least two dozen times between October 2022 and July 2023, according to published reports, and the Bidens had to send him away from the White House to live with other family members. The Bidens' previous German shepherd, Major, also had to be sent away after he bit people.
Hannity brought up the dog during an interview with Noem, who has garnered wide criticism for boasting and defending shooting and killing her 14-month-old puppy Cricket. She wrote in a memoir that the dog was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog,” per The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book. “I hated that dog,” Noem wrote. She went on to detail how she shot Cricket in a gravel pit before she also shot one of her goats.
Noem, who is a candidate to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, has doubled down on the killings, arguing that she had to make tough choices.
“I'm a dog lover. I've trained dogs for years, I've been around hundreds of them of course, and so this was a tough situation and very difficult. But that's what happens in rural America many times,” Noem said in her interview with Hannity. “At the time, I had small children, a lot of small kiddos that worked around our business and people, and I wanted to make sure that they were safe; and that dogs that have this kind of a problem — that have been to training for months and still kill for fun — they are extremely dangerous and a responsible owner does what they need to do and what the law will allow.”
Hannity defended that take: “A dog trainer friend of mine actually describes: every dog is a baby wolf, and they have a pack mentality, and once they get aggressive it's very difficult to alter and change that behavior.”
