WASHINGTON – Perhaps Kristi Noem should put down her pen.
For the second time in a week, the charming South Dakota governor has made a shocking claim in his upcoming book, No Going Back, that he met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while he was a lawmaker. .
The only problem? That never happened, the Post acknowledged.
In galley excerpts obtained by the Post, Noem, 52, includes Kim among a long list of world leaders she claims to have met in person, either during her time as governor or during her eight years in the House of Representatives. Year.
“He definitely underestimated me,” Noem wrote of Kim, who has ruled North Korea with an iron fist since 2011. ). ”
Noem wrote that the meeting took place while she served on the House Armed Services Committee from 2013 to 2015.
But Mr. Kim never left North Korea during his time in office until 2018, and there is no evidence that any lawmaker publicly or covertly visited the hermit kingdom during the period specified by Noem.
“It is inconceivable that a junior member of Congress would meet with the North Korean leader without clear U.S. State Department and military protection,” said George A. Lopez, a North Korea expert and professor at the institute. University of Notre Dame, told the Dakota Scoutwhich first reported Nomu’s questionable claims about Kim.
“It’s impossible,” Benjamin Young, another prominent North Korea observer and assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the magazine. “There is no way.”
Nom also raised eyebrows among veteran North Korea watchers by calling Kim “president” even though his official title is “chairman.”
In an interview with the Post Thursday, Noem’s spokesman Ian Furey initially said the governor “does not discuss the details of his meetings with world leaders.”
“If she wanted to share them, she would have outlined them in the book,” he added.
Hours later, Fury sent an additional response, saying Noem’s publisher “plans to address the confusion of world leaders’ names in the book prior to release.”
In addition to Kim, Noem said she also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The controversy comes after Noem admitted in the book that she had executed her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, which she said she “hated,” all but ending former President Donald Trump’s chances of becoming his running mate in 2024. It happened less than a week after. One reason for this was that they were “untrainable” as hunting dogs.
President Trump has not spoken publicly about Noem’s allegations, but faced fierce backlash from Republicans and Democrats alike when the news broke.
