Kristi Noem, desperate to be Trump’s #2, is pulling out all the stops as the veepstakes heats up

Kristi Noem has made it clear that she desperately, desperately wants to be Donald Trump‘s running mate in 2024. And, after months of campaigning for the job, it appears she’s just about sealed the deal.

Earlier this week, the 52-year-old gay-hating governor flew down to Mar-a-Lago to have a private meeting with the 77-year-old one-term, twice-impeached, quadruply-indicted ex-president.

“It was a good, long conversation with the president,” she told local media afterwards. “We met for a long time.”

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But she stopped short of saying what they actually spoke about.

“I’m not going to share private conversations that I had with the president,” she teased. “We did have a good meeting yesterday.”

“I’ve known Trump for years,” she continued. “We worked together when I was in Congress, he’s come to South Dakota, so it was good to visit with him and talk a little bit about 2024.”

The meeting comes just days after she tied with 9/11 truther Vivek Ramaswamy for first place for Trump’s VP pick in a straw poll conducted at CPAC.

Both received 15% of the vote, followed by Tulsi Gabbard at 9% and Elise Stefanik and Tim Scott tied at 8%. Further down the list was Kari Lake at 6% and Sarah Huckabee Sanders at 5%.

During a speech at CPAC, Noem took a shot at anyone who dared to run against Trump for the 2024 nomination, then crowed about how she was one of the first people to endorse him for president and didn’t even consider entering the race herself because, unlike all the others, she’s a loyal sycophant.

“Why did all these other people and candidates get into the race?” she asked the crowd. “For themselves. For personal benefit. For a spotlight for a period of time.”

She went on to gush about how Trump “broke politics in 2016” and “I think that’s a good thing.”

“Because he’s real,” she continued. “He’s not perfect—none of us are. But he cares about you. And what I love about him the most is that he doesn’t think he’s better than you.”

At CPAC 2024, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem says it's clear that former President Donald Trump is the only candidate that has the support to be the Republican nominee.@GovKristiNoem @KristiNoem

MORE: https://t.co/XyEWNVrDyt pic.twitter.com/KQmsAtpFmZ— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) February 23, 2024

This week, Politico reported that Noem has been angling for a meeting with Trump’s former VP Mike Pence, who the ex-president tried to have murdered, for advice on how she might increase her own chances of being his next victim picked as his next #2.

But she’s not stopping there.

Earlier this month, she announced she’s coming out with a new book this spring, as politicians almost always do whenever they want to position themselves for seeking higher office.

No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward is scheduled to hit bookstore shelves May 7, right around the time primary season will be winding down and the general election will be heating up.

Trump recently plugged the book on Truth Social, which Noem quickly re-shared and pinned to the top of her social pages.

Since assuming office in 2019, Noem has used her position to appeal to the MAGA base by chipping away at the rights of anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their extreme far-right Christian ideologies, primarily focusing her attacks on queer people and youth.

From banning drag shows to opening a “whistleblower hotline” that encourages the public to report anything “woke” happening at state colleges and universities, to outlawing gender-affirming care for trans minors and forcing those already receiving care to detransition, Noem has made it her mission as governor to ensure LGBTQ+ people are as marginalized as possible.

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t think it matters who he picks to be his #2 because “it’s never really had that much of an effect on an election” and, besides, he, alone, is enough to win any election… except, of course, in 2020 and every midterm since 2018.

During a Fox News town hall with homophobe Laura Ingraham last week, he said he was looking for a candidate with a good common sense.

“I always say I want people with common sense because there’s so many things happening in this country that don’t make sense,” he said somewhat nonsensically.

Of course, before Trump can pick a #2, he technically still needs to win 1,093 more delegates to reach the 1,215 threshold and avoid going bankrupt and being sentenced to prison. And while he appears on be on a glide path for his party’s nomination, with four criminal trials, 91 criminal counts, and roughly $600 million in legal expenses stacked against him, that other task might not be so easy.