An interesting strategy employed here by Noem. She thinks she's making a case for her own innocence, but with every word, spoken and unspoken, she confesses to what she did. Then she tacks the reason she had this woman fired, er, "retired": the good of South Dakota! Because some people in authority are in those positions too long. The sheer arrogance and audacity of her sordid "confessional" is quite breathtaking — and vomit-inducing. That South Dakota also later paid $200,000 in hush money to keep the woman quiet about it is probably just par for the course, there. But it is South Dakota and presumably, they deserve politicians as shameless and as amoral as this.

As a reminder, Noem is only addressing this at all because she wants the Republican nomination in 2024, and she thought she'd safely swept this issue under the rug, but it is getting national attention this week. Ironically, her explanation just makes things worse for her.

Source: Washington Post

South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem on Friday posted a video trying to explain the circumstances behind a controversial meeting she held with the head of an agency that had moved to deny her daughter’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser.

Noem (R) published the video days after dismissing reports about the meeting — which has prompted allegations of abuse of power and a review by the state’s Republican attorney general — as a political attack on her family.

“My daughter went through the exact same process that others did in South Dakota to become an appraiser,” Noem tweeted Friday. “She was treated no different. And I never asked for her to get special treatment.”

In the tweet, Noem linked to a nearly three-minute YouTube video she had filmed, titled “The Facts on South Dakota Appraiser Certification,” in which she blasted “speculation and innuendo in the media” and said that she had raised her daughter to accomplish things on her own.

Noem did acknowledge her administration had been “fixing” the certification process to make it easier for people in South Dakota to become real estate appraisers, because the requirements were making it “way too difficult.”

Kristi Noem assures everyone today that the actions she took that resulted in her daughter receiving her appraisers license were taken to benefit all S. Dakotans, not just her daughter, by “streamlining the process.” pic.twitter.com/c6E6t7fNk3

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 1, 2021

My daughter went through the exact same process that others did in South Dakota to become an appraiser. She was treated no different. And I never asked for her to get special treatment. https://t.co/JlUc8VUFQx

— Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) October 1, 2021