Just months ago, Gov. Kristi Noem endured accusations that she had conducted a yearslong extramarital affair. But you would never guess of the scandal by her actions, as the South Dakota governor has remained resolute in her efforts to position herself to become the Republican vice presidential nominee under Donald Trump. Since the beginning of the year, Noem has traveled to Iowa to campaign for the former president, delivered a State of the State address laden with self-promotion, appeared on Fox News, and released the next in a series of advertisements starring her that is strategically aimed at both encouraging people to move to South Dakota and raising her public profile. In essence, her reaction to the affair scandal has been to act as though it never happened.
The allegation that Noem conducted an affair with former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski broke through a Sept. 13, 2023, tell-all report that was published by the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail’s report was followed days later by a similar account in the New York Post; the Post supplied an additional five anonymous sources to back up its claims. The Daily Mail’s report went into so much detail as to chart Noem and Lewandowski’s day-to-day travels alongside one another to a bevy of political events (and luxury resorts) as well as the time they spent together at those events. Lewandowski had been an adviser to both Trump and Noem before he was fired from both jobs in 2020 for allegedly sexually harassing the wife of a billionaire donor. (READ MORE from Ellie Gardey: Democratic Presidential Candidate Dean Phillips Is Fed Up With the Liberal Media)
When the report was released in September, Noem was near the top of the pack of contenders for the role of vice presidential nominee and was all but openly seeking the job. It’s been months since the Daily Mail’s detailed report. And Noem is still running just as openly to become the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee. Moreover, she is still viewed as having a high chance of winning the role.
Noem has been openly embracing the speculation that Trump could select her to be his vice presidential nominee.
Noem has simply denied the report and moved on — and it seems like everyone else is fine with letting the story go as well. Her appearance last week at a Trump campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, again demonstrated that the Trump campaign has little concern for the alleged affair. And this week, the Atlantic published a profile of Noem that consigned mention of the affair to paragraph 16 of its account.
In addition, South Dakota politicos have been willing to move on from the report. For instance, Lee Schoenbeck, the president pro tempore of the South Dakota Senate, told Sioux Falls Live in September that “he would be the last to know what Gov. Noem does in her personal life.” Similarly, state Rep. Greg Jamison told the same publication, “Those kinds of things always seem to come out about people who are a rising political star…. The Kristi Noem that I know doesn’t match any of those descriptions or accounts, but Kristi and I don’t chit chat either.” Likewise, the state’s House Majority leader called the stories of the alleged affair “tabloid garbage,” while Spencer Gosch, who was South Dakota’s speaker of the House until 2022, asserted that he had not “seen anything to corroborate it.”
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Public news of Noem’s alleged affair first surfaced in a 2021 article published in American Greatness. Noem’s reaction at the time was to totally deny the veracity of the report. She said in response, “These rumors are total garbage and a disgusting lie.” But for the Daily Mail’s more detailed report, she and Lewandowski both issued responses that were less than adamant denials. The Daily Mail said that when it reached out to Noem for her to comment on its story, the governor “issued a statement attacking us for the timing of the article.” Lewandowski, meanwhile, did not respond to the request for comment. After the Daily Mail’s story was published, Noem’s office continued to not comment. Ian Fury, Noem’s spokesman, told Sioux Falls Live that he would not be commenting “without on-the-record corroboration of the relationship.” Later, however, Fury came back to Sioux Falls Live and said in a text message, “The allegation of an affair is false.” Fury then said in a statement, “It is shameful that Sioux Falls Live would report based on a false and inflammatory tabloid rumor. It was also false that Governor Noem did not deny the allegation to the Daily Mail. They failed to print the denial and failed to appropriately correct the story when that failure was pointed out to them.”
The allegations of the affair not only cast doubts on Noem’s authenticity as a self-proclaimed champion of family values; they also prompted concerns she was altering her actions in her role as governor to conceal the affair and spend time with Lewandowski. A follow-up story by the Daily Mail quoted an anonymous source from within Noem’s administration who claimed that the governor would not inform her own staffers as to where she would be so that she could conceal the time she spent with Lewandowski from her husband, who allegedly knew of the affair and despised Lewandowski. Another staffer alleged that Noem had “secret vacations” and would “simply disappear.” The alleged relationship was also problematic on a professional level given that Noem claimed to have fired Lewandowski following the sexual harassment allegations against him. But it seems as though she continued working with him after she made that announcement. A source told the Daily Mail, “When Las Vegas happened, she fired him without really firing him.” (READ MORE: Kristi Noem Loses Religious Conservatives)
Noem’s entire term as South Dakota’s governor, which began in 2019, has been dominated by her efforts to position herself on the national stage. Even her advertising campaign encouraging Americans to move to South Dakota has put her front and center. In the most recent iteration of the ads, Noem dresses as the types of workers the state is trying to recruit — as an accountant or nurse, for example — and encourages people like herself to come to South Dakota. She has traveled far and wide for public events and is a mainstay on Fox News. Noem even built a TV studio in the South Dakota capitol for that purpose.
Noem has been openly embracing the speculation that Trump could select her to be his vice presidential nominee. When a reporter asked her while she was campaigning for Trump in Iowa earlier this month whether she would consider accepting the spot of Trump’s vice presidential nominee, she said, “I think anybody in this country, if they were offered it, needs to consider it.” Furthermore, when a reporter asked her what qualities Trump should look for in a vice presidential nominee, she answered, “Oh gosh, someone who tells him the truth.” When the reporter further inquired as to whether she believes she has that quality, Noem answered, “Oh yeah, but I can think of a lot of people who have those qualities, but yeah, I’ve been very honest with the president.” Noem has also been playing the long game for the role, as she came out early to endorse Trump in September of last year.
Noem’s efforts to promote herself and divert attention away from the affair appear to be succeeding, as she is currently Trump’s most likely vice presidential nominee, according to the betting market. Perhaps an extramarital affair is no longer a major transgression according to the standards of the media and politicians.
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