'These people are evil': How Noem's response to Trump rally shooting differs from other leaders

Donald Trump was shot. His ear bled and his face was streaked with blood. And with a defiant fist held aloft, the former president mouthed the words "fight" to his base.

The attempted assassination of Trump during a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania was a historic event viewed as intrinsically tragic by Americans of all stripes, but the imagery of Trump literally bleeding on the campaign trail quickly evolved into a rallying cry for his Republican allies.

A bullet grazed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's upper right ear, leaving him bloodied but not seriously injured, according to USA Today. One rally attendee was killed in the gunfire and two others were "critically injured," authorities later said.

The FBI identified Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the person responsible for the assassination attempt at about 5:10 p.m. CDT. Crooks was killed by Secret Service agents moments after gunfire erupted at the rally. Agency officials released little additional information, saying its investigation remains active and ongoing. They did not indicate what Crooks' motive might have been.

Where some gave measured responses to the violence, others, like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, were quick to point fingers before all the facts were laid out.

Noem blamed a vague 'they' for attempt on Trump's life. Allies of the former president were more direct with their finger pointing.

Noem was among the first of Trump's allies to render her support on social media. She wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, asking people to "[p]ray for Donald J. Trump" and "for the United States of America."

"He’s the toughest man I’ve ever met," Noem, a Trump vice presidential hopeful, wrote at 5:31 p.mundefined "Nobody’s been through what he’s been through. May swift justice be brought against his evil attacker."

But in a follow-up video statement released within an hour of the attack, and hours before the shooter had been identified, the governor reiterated her message with an accusatory tone. She condemned a vague "they" as having a hand in the shooting, and appeared to become emotional as the video ended.

"These people are evil," Noem said in the Saturday post, which had more than 888,000 views as of 4:15 p.m. Sunday. "They need to be eliminated from power, and President Trump is the only one who can do that."

It isn't clear who Noem was referring to. Her spokesperson, Ian Fury, did not respond to multiple requests in the time since the shooting for comment in which the Argus Leader asked for clarification.

In the same video, she also said Trump was shot. This turned out to be true, but the governor made the claim hours before the former president confirmed it himself and as fluid reports mentioned Trump was possibly hit by a shard of glass from a broken teleprompter in the shooting instead.

Other Trump allies were more direct. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who was named Trump's VP pick Monday, directly blamed President Joe Biden's campaign about two hours after the shooting.

"Today is not just some isolated incident," Vance wrote on X. "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."

Similarly, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., made an unsubstantiated claim that "Democrats wanted this to happen."

"They’ve wanted Trump gone for years and they’re prepared to do anything to make that happen," Greene wrote on X.

Greene also claimed Democratic representatives wanted to remove Trump's U.S. Secret Service protections. Several Democratic lawmakers did sponsor a House bill that would remove his security detail, but only if he would be sentenced to prison after being found guilty of 34 felony counts tied to a hush money trial on May 31.

Noem's comments, and the reaction of other Republican congressional members, also came before Crooks was determined to be actively registered as a Republican with no previous criminal record in state and federal court databases. As of Tuesday morning, Crooks' motive and ideology remain unknown, and he appears to have acted as a lone wolf, according to FBI officials.

Other South Dakota leaders took a more cautious approach in addressing politically charged moment

Dan Ahlers, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, did not directly address the statements made by Noem or other Republican figures shortly after the shooting, but he did tell the Argus Leader on Sunday, "It is important the correct information gets out so that people can make sound decisions on what comes next."

"I think that it is prudent for and was responsible of our media to take the time to get the facts straight," Ahlers said.

The South Dakota Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Michael Card, a professor of political science at University of South Dakota, told the Argus Leader on Sunday there's a certain logic and rationale in Republican political figures wanting accountability for the near-death of their party's presumptive nominee. Trump became that nominee Monday night at the Republican National Convention.

But there's a lot of unknowns at play — even with the would-be assassin identified — that could make the targeted assumptions shared by Vance, Greene and others incendiary to the ongoing elections dialogue, Card added.

"These are individuals who have a set of followers, and there are a number of people who would take this as a license, metaphorically, to retaliate," Card said. "It's unfortunate that rhetoric sometimes produces reality."

Adding fuel to the fire are comments President Joe Biden made during a July 8 phone call with his National Finance Committee. He told hundreds of top Democratic donors and bundlers, "it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye," according to Politico.

The context of the call was centered on shoring up support from his base while urging his party to focus their ire on Trump's policy platform, Politico reported. This came after the 81-year-old president gave a troubled performance in a nationally televised debate with his presumptive opponent on June 27, which gave rise to questions about his age and fitness to serve from Republicans and even spurred some of his staunchest Democratic allies to call on him to drop out from the race.

Whether Biden's "bullseye" comment was an intentional call to action or simply a victim of bad timing, Republican Rep. Mike Collins, of Georgia, appeared to assert the president's rhetoric led to the shooting.

"Joe Biden sent the orders," Collins wrote about half an hour after the Saturday shooting.

Noem did not directly point to any pro-Biden or Democratic rhetoric in her video statement, but she did call for an undetermined "they" to be "eliminated from power."

It's this type of hasty, politicized response that contrasts with the more measured reactions from South Dakota's top political leaders.

Sens. Mike Rounds and John Thune, R-S.D., issued statements similar to one another. Like Noem, Rounds and Thune said they were "praying" for Trump's safety, but the senators also expressed their sympathies toward the families of the man killed and two people who were critically injured at the rally. Thune thanked law enforcement, while Rounds called on authorities to release information about the shooter.

But as of Sunday evening, Noem had not appeared to offer condolences to the victims of the assassination attempt, other than Trump.

The Argus Leader reached out to Fury on Sunday evening for further comment, but a response was not provided by deadline.

Outside of the shared outrage over a security blunder of historic proportions, there's several factors that could play into Noem's reaction.

The governor has long allied herself with Trump publicly and through hosting key rallies in South Dakota during and leading up to election years. In 2020, then-President Trump joined Noem for a fireworks celebration at Mount Rushmore. Later, in 2023, the second-term governor welcomed the former president to a rally in Rapid City, where she endorsed his presidential run.

Trump, too, has played a part in Noem's status as a rising star in conservative circles. Trump turned the tide for Noem’s first gubernatorial campaign, appearing at a fundraiser for her in Sioux Falls weeks before the 2018 election. He also endorsed her second gubernatorial campaign in January 2022, months ahead of the general election.

Noem's name had also been flouted on Trump's vice-presidential shortlist during his 2024 run. Those chances appeared to slim — at least initially — in April and the following months after media reports circulated an anecdote from her newest memoir of her killing her hunting dog and a goat years ago. She faced significant scrutiny on a national level, and her publishing company later needed to correct at least two historically inaccurate statements about a fabricated meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and her falsely claiming that Sen. Mike Rounds called for Donald Trump to drop out of the presidential race in late 2016.

Noem's 'these people' comments may be 'strategic' or unintentional, political expert says

There's ambiguity in Noem's "[t]hese people" comments." The USD political expert said her words may reiterate the rhetoric, though in a veiled manner.

"There's a certain amount of ambiguity, you know. I suspect with Gov. Noem that it's strategic ambiguity," Card said. "You don't really know what she means by that."

Noem's response may also simply be ambiguous "without intention behind it," Card added.

Some Republican leaders have called for a political ceasefire since the attack. House Speaker Mike Johnson told NBC on Sunday, "We can't go on like this as a society" and called on political parties to "turn the rhetoric down."

"We need leaders of all parties, on both sides, to call that out and make sure that happens so that we can go forward and maintain our free society that we all are blessed to have," Johnson said.

Biden has also since asked Americans to curb their fervor in his Sunday evening address to the nation. He called for national unity and decried political violence in all its forms, and, according to the Associated Press, it had been his third address to the nation since the Sunday evening attack.

"We cannot, we must not go down this road in America," Biden said. "The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It's time to cool it down. We all have a responsibility to do that."

Biden has also said he connected with the former president in a brief phone call hours after the shooting, but he has not elaborated on the details of the conversation.

Trump, too, may seek to cool his speech in wake of the attempt on his life. Ahead of this week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump told the Washington Examiner he had planned to rewrite his upcoming Thursday speech, which was centered on attacking Biden's policy record, in favor of iterating a message that could "bring the whole country, even the whole world, together."

But Card said the political landscape could remain white-hot in the short term due to the already polarized state of the country.

"One of the tasks of leadership is to try to avoid putting fuel on the fire, so to speak, that people would take as license to engage in some violent event," Card said. "I think the American public needs to take a deep breath. Be thankful that only one person was killed, wish for healing of the other individuals who were seriously injured. And trust reliable news sources as the facts unfold and are revealed."

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Analyzing Kristi Noem's response to attempted assassination of Trump