'It Just Gets Worse': Kristi Noem Torched For Digging In Again On Kim Jong Un Story

Kristi Noem is still digging in after making a dubious claim in her new book that she once met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and critics aren’t buying it.

The South Dakota governor, a Republican, has been at the center of an intensifying firestorm surrounding the release of her book, “No Going Back.” One of the issues at hand is the veracity of her claim that she met Kim when she was serving in Congress. After that claim was called out as false, her spokesperson told HuffPost on Friday that two “small errors” in the book would be corrected, and that Kim was “included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”

But over the past few days, Noem muddied the waters in a series of media appearances in which she refused to give a straight answer on whether she had met with Kim.

Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Noem did it again when pressed by host Jesse Watters.

“Did you meet [Kim Jong Un]?” Watters asked.

“I’ve been to the DMZ. I’ve been to North Korea,” Noem replied, referring to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

“I don’t talk about my conversations with world leaders,” she added, even though she did just that in the book.

“And so, when I looked at the book and I saw that excerpt, I decided to make the change to the content of the book and that’s been done.”

Watters followed up, “So, you didn’t have a conversation with Kim when you were at the DMZ?”

“I don’t have conversations about my conversations with world leaders,” Noem replied.

The new spin didn’t land on social media, where she was encouraged to put down the shovel.

“It just gets worse every time she opens her mouth,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) posted.

See some of the other reactions below.