Photo via @KristiNoem/Twitter
July 6, 2021, 10:14 am
While some of us cringed our way through the 4th of July hoping that it wouldn’t result in too many wildfires after punishing heat waves on both coasts, one Republican governor decided humiliation was on the menu for her Independence Day cookout.
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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was apparently upset about local firework bans implemented out of the fear of wildfire problems as the world grows hotter and the fires get worse year after year, and lashed out at the Biden administration for it while also attempting to suck up to Trump.
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Unforunately for Noem, the tiniest bit of research found a significant plot hole in the Twitter post she had to rope her miserable kids into.
The image she undoubtedly had some underpaid staffer make for her, posted with the hashtag #SparklersSuck, includes photos of her family looking bummed out with sparklers labeled “Biden’s America” and a photo of a Mount Rushmore fireworks display labeled “Trump’s America.”
The problem is that the top image is not from Trump’s America at all. It’s from Obama’s America. Twitter users quickly found the source of the image and found that it was taken prior to 2010 and posted online in 2015, when former President Barack Obama was in office, and that fireworks at Mount Rushmore were banned in 2010 thanks to Native activists fighting to protect their land.
Trump brought them back in 2020, ignoring objections by tribal leaders and refusing to even meet with them, but Biden decided to go back to respecting their wishes and not risking wildfires in the Black Hills region around the Six Grandfathers mountains, which are sacred to the Lakota and Cheyenne River tribes.
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Even though he ignored the risks and continued the U.S. tradition of stepping on Native Americans, the photo Noem used was still not from that year. A little bit more effort and maybe the tweet might have not been a total embarrassment, just another admission from the GOP that they don’t care who gets their homes burned down as long as they can have their pretty lights and colors.
This is really something Noem should have been clued into considering the fact that she tried to get a federal judge to force the National Park Service to let her set off fireworks at the Six Grandfathers this year, but the judge declined to do so on July 3. Thanks to the South Dakota governor, some celebrated their 4th of July with metaphorical burns rather than real ones.
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*First Published: July 6, 2021, 10:14 am
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