In response to Donald Trump announcing Doug Burgum as his Secretary of the Interior pick, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Donald Trump picked Doug Burgum to be Secretary of the Interior because he’s a MAGA loyalist who has repeatedly sided with Trump’s billionaire special interest backers over hardworking Americans. Burgum was clear on the campaign trail – he and Trump will look out for billionaires, big oil, and big gas first even if it means canning American jobs and undermining American industry. Just like Trump, Burgum is focused on lining the pockets of the ultra-wealthy like himself — not serving the American people.”

NEW: Donald Trump announced he’s picking Doug Burgum — a MAGA extremist in the pocket of Big Oil — to be Secretary of the Interior.

New York Times: “Trump Picks Burgum for Interior Secretary”

“The North Dakota governor helped strengthen ties between the oil industry and President-elect Donald J. Trump

“President-elect Donald J. Trump has tapped Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota to lead the Interior Department, leading the new administration’s plans to open federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling.

“Governor Burgum, 68, has longstanding ties to fossil fuel companies and acted as a liaison between the Trump campaign and the oil executives who have donated heavily to it. The governor is particularly close to Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire founder and chairman of Continental Resources, one of the country’s largest independent oil companies, who has hosted fund-raisers and donated nearly $5 million to Mr. Trump since 2023.”

Burgum has long been a cheerleader for Trump’s failed MAGAnomics agenda of rigging the economy for ultra-wealthy people like him and big corporations at the expense of working families. 

Burgum: “Our state has built a strong and growing economy on reducing individual and corporate income tax rates, common-sense regulations and a business-friendly environment, and this federal tax reform legislation – combined with the Trump administration’s tremendous progress in rolling back burdensome regulations – will spread those principles nationwide.”

Burgum: “His policies are all in the right direction. If you’re a billionaire… you should be voting for [Trump].”

CNBC: “Trump VP prospect Doug Burgum and GOP megadonor Harold Hamm are allies in business and politics”

Doug Burgum: “I believe in these economic policies, I believe the tax bill is a great thing.”

Washington Post: “Trump makes sweeping promises to donors on audacious fundraising tour”

“As he closed his pitch at the Pierre Hotel, Trump explained to the group why it was in their interest to cut large checks. If he was not put back in office, taxes would go up for them under President Biden, who vows to let Trump-era tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations expire at the end of 2025.

“Seconds after promising the tax cuts, Trump made his pitch explicit. ‘So whatever you guys can do, I appreciate it,’ he said.”

The Guardian: “Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cuts have helped billionaires pay a lower rate than the working class for the first time in history.”

Bismarck Tribune: “Gov. Doug Burgum accepted more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from oil company executives last fall, despite comments he made as a candidate that accepting donations from the oil industry would be a conflict of interest.”

Associated Press: “Big Oil is big funder of Burgum inaugural”

Burgum supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, historic legislation that is lowering health care costs, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and expanding access to cleaner, cheaper energy.

HealthInsurance.org: “In late 2017, Burgum and 19 other Republican governors wrote a letter to Congress, urging lawmakers to repeal the ACA.”

Burgum on whether he would push to repeal the IRA: “Yeah.”

Burgum signed a near-total abortion ban in North Dakota with no exceptions for rape or incest after six weeks — something he was able to do because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade.

CBS News: “Burgum signed into law one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, an abortion ban that allows limited exceptions up to six weeks’ gestation, and only for medical emergencies at any other point in the pregnancy.”

Welker: “You said ‘America was an unsafe place for women before Roe v. Wade.’ So by your own standard, Governor, is America unsafe for women as a result of Roe being overturned?”

Burgum: “No, it’s not. … I’ve evolved in that position.”

The Hill: “As governor of North Dakota, Burgum signed one of the strictest abortion bills in the nation last year, banning abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy.”

Burgum: “Today’s landmark Supreme Court decision returns power to the states where it belongs…Our administration has consistently supported pro-life legislation and this decision is a victory for the many North Dakotans who have fought so hard and for so long to protect the unborn in our state.” 

New York Times: “North Dakota became the latest state on Monday to enact a near-total ban on abortion, just one month after the State Supreme Court temporarily blocked a similar ban from taking effect. Under the new law, an abortion in the case of rape or incest would be permissible only in the first six weeks of pregnancy, a time when most women have not yet realized they are pregnant.”

Burgum has consistently pushed Trump’s baseless 2020 election denialism and lies that threaten our democracy.

Kirsten Welker, NBC: “Can you commit here and now today to accepting the election results?”

Burgum: “These hypothetical questions that keep coming up… I’m not going to comment on an election before it happens.”

Welker: “You won’t commit to accepting the election results?”

Burgum: “I will commit if they’re free and fair.”

Welker: “Should [Trump] unequivocally accept the election results?”

Burgum: “I heard him on Thursday night say he would accept the results of the election if it was free and fair and secure. … We had a smooth transition [after the 2020 election].”

Welker: “January 6 was not exactly a smooth transition.”

Burgum: “We have to say that there was a smooth transition.”

Welker: “Trump made more than 30 false claims during that debate. … Do you think he should stop saying things that are not true?”

Burgum: “Everything Trump said on Thursday he has said before, so this is not news.”

Savannah Guthrie, NBC: “One of the last things [voters] remember, of course, is January 6, the president losing the election, but claiming he didn’t, people rioting at the Capitol, here he was again tonight asked point blank, ‘If you lose the election, will you concede?’ And he just doesn’t answer the question directly. He’s always hedging it with if it’s free and fair. And of course, the implication is it’s not free and fair, if he’s not the winner, why don’t you just come right out and say, of course, I’ll accept the results of this election?”

Burgum: “Well, I think you heard him say that at the end, it would be easier for him if everybody thought we had secure elections. But we know in our country, being a democracy, this is a challenge.”

Guthrie: “That’s just a red herring, because I mean, he got to litigate it. He had the advantages of our democracy, and our courts and every other institution, which found that it was a free and fair election, and yet, he’s still on about that. And he won’t say that he’ll accept the results of this election. I just don’t get that.”

[…]

Burgum: “When you’ve got unmonitored documents that don’t have any control over the path of that document, you don’t know where it came from, you don’t know where it’s been, that would never pass any kind of audit from, you know, a quarterly audit from a public company. So I think we all want the same thing in America whether it’s the 2000 election, which was challenged to do down in one county in Florida, the ‘16 election, which people claimed there’s Russian interference, the 2020 election, I mean, three of our last five elections, either the different parties had been saying there was concerns.”