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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum | 3.2.25
00:20:07
Just days after President Trump’s cabinet meeting, we sit down with Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. He lays out his ambitious agenda for achieving energy independence and energy dominance. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
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- [00:03]
John Bickley
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has laid out an ambitious agenda for his department, which manages one fifth of the land and waters of the United States. Among his priorities, making America energy independent and making America beautiful again. In this episode, we sit down with Secretary Bergam to hammer out his plan to use energy dominance to defeat China and help President Trump in wars. I'm Daily Wire Editor in Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, March 2nd, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota. First of all, thank you so much for joining us.
- [00:46]
Doug Burgum
Well, great to be with you, John. Thank you for having me on your show.
- [00:49]
John Bickley
The first meeting of Cabinet secretaries was this week. We wanted to ask you about that first. You were there, obviously. What stood out to you about that meeting?
- [00:58]
Doug Burgum
Well, I think two things. One is, you know, having been a CEO for most of my life and then a governor for eight years is leadership. I mean, President Trump is exhibiting all the great qualities of leadership, starting with, you know, are you giving your team clear direction? And the executive orders that he's put out provide very specific actions for the Cabinet leaders to go execute on the promises that he made to the American people. So that's clear direction. So that's great. Then the second thing is you gotta. You gotta hire a great team. And I look around that room and number of those folks are friends of mine, people that I've known, people that have had great success in the private sector, people that are making big sacrifices to come and do public service, working for the government to try to solve these problems that people think are intractable, like our $2 trillion deficit. He's empowering everybody. I mean, it's like, let's go and go quickly because these are big, important issues for ourselves, our kids, our grandkids. So that's the second thing, you know, clear direction. Hire a great team. Number two, three, empower them. And number four, hold people accountable. And President Trump does that better than almost any CEO in the country. He holds people accountable for what they do. And so I felt the energy in the room was really electric. People were excited to be there, to be in the Cabinet room, to be part of this historic team. And I think the amount of talent in the room is really, really high. And I'm very excited about what everybody's going to get done and get done working together and working together for the American people.
- [02:26]
John Bickley
I want to talk to you about some of the priorities he laid out and that you've also laid out in terms of your department. But first, I do want to talk about the team. I want to talk about Elon Musk in particular. He came up a lot. Legacy media has reported on this from a negative angle. I think a lot of Americans feel very differently about his involvement in the government so far. Trump said during the meeting. Does anyone have a problem with Elon? If they do, we'll kick them out of here. How are the other secretaries receiving Mr. Musk, and how do you feel about him?
- [02:56]
Doug Burgum
Well, I think I can only speak for myself, but I think the excitement around the idea that you've got not just a entrepreneur, not a business leader, not a visionary, not someone who's obviously brilliant. But for me, the reason I get excited is Elon grew up in tech and that's where I spent my career is in tech. And being a tech CEO is different than other categories in tech. There are no natural barriers. No one has a monopoly. New entrants show up tomorrow completely out of the blue and you have to be better, faster, cheaper for your customers tomorrow than you were yesterday or you go out of business. So competition drives innovation. And we, we do have parts of our nation, we don't pick airlines, railroads, public utilities. You know, these are regulated businesses with limited amounts of competition. And the folks that have survived in tech really know about innovation. And government is essentially been regulated government. Most of what government does is often a monopoly. They're the only place that can give you a permit. They're the only you can get a driver's license. You have to get permission from the federal government. And that's why we find things where, you know, the federal government ends up being the 9 to 4:30 where the rest of the economy is 7 by 24 by 365. And so bringing that tech sense in is something I'm super excited about because once you do the cost cutting, then you have to bring on the backside, you know, Elon opens up his jacket, it says tech support. We've got to come in and we have to arm the people that work for government at the state and federal level with the same tools that their private sector counterparts have. And we haven't done that. We've underinvested in technology. The business processes, the productivity tools aren't there. And we can have fewer jobs, but they can be more meaningful and more purposeful. We can get rid of the mind numbing, soul sucking work that's buried in a lot of these jobs. And the jobs that we do have allow people to really make a difference in people's lives. And so I get excited about the path that we're on and where we're going. And this is also, you know, major, major. Right. Sizing of the federal government. That's never happened before. And it's, in my mind, long overdue.
- [05:06]
John Bickley
Well, you started off talking about the energy in the room, and I do feel like this is an energetic administration so far, and it does feel like an experiment. Can the federal government be innovative again? Can it do some things that are actually new? I wanted to talk to you specifically about your department and what new things you're going to do for our listener's sake. A Secretary of the Interior is responsible for managing nearly one fifth of the lands and waters of the US A lot of people don't understand all the roles that you do play. Can you talk to us about what your priorities are in your new role?
- [05:40]
Doug Burgum
Well, I happy to. And I've actually got two roles because in addition to being the Secretary of Interior, President Trump has created the National Energy Dominance Council, asked me to be chair, asked Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, to be the vice chair. And about half the cabinet leaders in the cabinet meeting yesterday are also on the National Energy Dominance Council. And the whole idea behind that, that is that we've got to have affordable, reliable energy for all Americans, and we've got to produce more energy of all kinds. We need more electricity. We need more liquid fuels. We need more biofuels. We need all of the above that can be reliable and affordable. And if we do that, then we can sell energy to our friends and allies and have them stop buying from our adversaries. I mean, there's two proxy wars that President Trump is trying to end right now, one with Russia, Ukraine, the other funded by Iranian oil sales in the Middle east, where they're funding 24 terrorist groups. But we have a chance to literally change the whole world when we change U.S. energy policy. And that's going to take the whole of government. And where does the Department of Interior come in? Well, it comes in, as you say, because 500 million acres of land that the interior controls, but 700 million acres of subsurface. We used to be a great mining culture in America. Now we're completely dependent on our adversaries for the critical and rare earth minerals we need, for technology and for defense, a couple billion acres of offshore that we have, that have an enormous resource that we can develop safely and securely and be great for our environment. So this is the balance sheet of America. If Interior was A separate company, it would be the largest balance sheet in the world. And when Theodore Roosevelt put away those hundreds of millions of acres, it was specifically stated, this is for the benefit and the use of the American people. And he understood that the strength of that balance sheet, whether it was having an actual timber industry, a paper industry, as opposed to importing all of our timber from other countries, he understood that when we do things like that, like be smart about how we're doing timber harvesting from mature forests, we also reduce forest fires. So there's many, many win win opportunities across our land use, which is great for the environment, great for the public, and it gives us an opportunity. The Interior is a money making department. Our efforts can help pay down the debt and we can help fund better experiences in our national parks. We can use those money to help protect our last best places. We can do all of that, but we've got to manage it smartly and according to law, the way that it was intended.
- [08:09]
John Bickley
I wanted to ask you specifically about nuclear and we, we talked a lot about that over the decades, ideas about, well, you know, maybe ramping that up or a lot of times pulling back on it. We've seen Europe sort of struggling internally over this. What are your goals in terms of the nuclear potential the US has mid.
- [08:29]
Doug Burgum
To long term nuclear is essential for our country and both the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright and I agree on that. There's some big changes coming after change our approach. We've basically choked this industry in our country for the last 30 years with Red tape. It's been an incredibly safe industry. There's been zero deaths from the nuclear industry in our country. Matter of fact, as I was checking, more people have died from being frustrated with vending machines and then shaking vending machines than having the vending machine tip over on them. More people have died from that in America than from nuclear.
- [09:03]
John Bickley
Is that a real statistic?
- [09:05]
Doug Burgum
Yeah, go look it up. It's a real deal. So it's. But anyway, it's, it's sad but true. We have a big opportunity in what's coming with the innovation around small modular nuclear. These are smaller units. Think of these being manufactured in a factory and then being assembled on site so that the regulations could approve a design. And then as long as the design is inspected and it's gone in and they've got less pressure, less temperature, less water, less waste, it's just a whole new approach to how we would create electricity. And they're not as massive as the way we think about it right now. We have 93 operating nuclear sites in America today and just recently opened one, but I think it's the first new one that's opened in 30 years. We are in an electricity race against China, and we're in an electricity race because electricity is what powers AI data centers. And an AI data center is not. It's not like, hey, we're doing Blue Cross, Blue Shield medical claims or we're processing somebody's online shopping request. I mean, those are essential data center activities. But in an AI plant, you're actually manufacturing intelligence. And that base intelligence that they're manufacturing could be being used by, you know, every employee of every company in the country. I mean, it'll touch every job, every teacher, every student, every doctor, every patient. I mean, everybody is going to get lifted up by the productivity of artificial intelligence, and the demand for that is going to be very high. But it takes a lot of power. It can also be used for nefarious purposes. And China's. They're building 30 nuclear plants. They've added 100 gigawatts of coal in the last year. That's enough to power 100. Denver's. A gigawatt is a thousand megawatts. So we're talking about 100,000 megawatts of coal. They've added. They're building huge hydro plants. We may be ahead of them in terms of our software for AI, but they're ahead of us in terms of applying just brute force against electricity. And, and so if we end up in this cyber war with China down road between the great power wards and they're not going to land a ship and have people charge ashore, you know, we're going to wake up and find out that our power grid has been shut down and therefore no one can fly on a commercial flight. Our AI data centers don't work. Our missile defense doesn't work. People can't go to school and they can't order anything from, you know, Amazon. I mean, if the whole power grid goes down, I mean, these are the kinds of threats for the future risks that we have to look at. And so one of the ways that we defend ourselves in that world is we've got to generate more electricity. And that's one of the things we're doing. And nuclear doesn't help us in the next three to four years. It could be five years or further out before some of the small modular nuclear start arriving. And then it'll take a while for them to arrive at scale. But think of it, think of it for, you know, a military base in the middle of Alaska, you can generate the power close to where the demand load is and you don't have to build a transmission line. I mean, we save all kinds of money. It's clean, it's safe, and it can be discreet in terms of where we place these in a distributed way, as opposed to a big plant with lots of transmission lines, smaller plants close to the, the band load. It's a great solution for the future. And it's also great because in some ways it's deregulated. I talked about that earlier, but there's a dozen or more companies working on these designs. There's competition. That competition is going to lower cost and improve the designs and improve the safety. And I think people have every right to be very bullish on a long term nuclear, but in the next two or three years, it's not energy transition. Everyone talks about energy transition. No, it's energy addition. We need more energy. In particular that we need more electricity in the short term. And that's going to take us really getting to work on bringing more generation online and stop shutting down the baseload that we have right now. Regardless of source, we've got to keep every plant we have going right now, otherwise we're going to be facing brownouts and blackouts in this country.
- [12:53]
John Bickley
Speaking of short term, inflationary forces were clearly at work during the Biden administration. Energy has so much to do with inflationary prices. How fast do you see the new administration being able to turn those, some of those things around? I know it's not an easy fix or a quick fix. Do you see inflationary forces easing soon and how so?
- [13:15]
Doug Burgum
Well, energy, like many commodities, has a futures price and the markets are already reflecting in future price that people think energy prices are going to come down. And why is that? Because they understand that this administration is going to accelerate the supply. Whether it's oil and gas, whether it's ethanol, whether it's electricity. We're racing to try to get more of available energy on the market for Americans. We're trying to get more energy to sell to our allies so they can stop buying from our adversaries. And with more supply, your prices come down. The prior administration, the Biden administration, through regulation, red tape, through policy, through public land use, where they were illegally not holding the required lease sales for private companies to develop energy on public lands, they were doing everything they could to restrict US Supply, but when they were restricting US Supply, they were just shifting the demand overseas. And when the demand is being filled overseas by places like, you know, if China is building all of our batteries and building all our solar panels. They're doing that without an epa, without any regard to the environment. Tearing up countries in Africa and using child labor to produce a battery that we were subsidizing with taxpayer dollars makes no sense for us and doesn't make any sense for the environment. So this approach of having American energy, if people care, that are listening, care about the environment, you should want to have every electron, every ounce of liquid fuels produced in the US we do it cleaner, smarter, safer, and better for the environment. The US Is the leader in lowering emissions in the world. China is on the opposite end of the scale. They're the world's largest polluter, and they continue to grow in that way. So it's like us doing it here in America. First approach is also the best for our environment and for the global environment.
- [15:02]
John Bickley
Trump has launched a flood of initiatives. It's hard to keep up, actually. He has established a sovereign wealth fund and promised to make America beautiful again. You have a role in some of this. Can you speak to that? Particularly make America beautiful again. What's that agenda? How does your department play into that and your actions?
- [15:21]
Doug Burgum
Well, we play in a big way because the 64 national parks, the hundreds of national historic sites, the national mall here in D.C. that's all under the Park Service. U.S. fish and Wildlife are fantastic fish and wildlife refuges around the country. You know, all of these things are public lands. And those the special places that we have, the last best places, we're doing a fantastic job. We have to continue to preserve those, and we can do energy development and preserve these spaces, the last best places that we have. The parks are only a tiny fraction of the land mass of this giant number, the 500 million acres of surface. The national parks only represent a smaller portion of that. So we can do both. We can do energy development cleanly, sustainably and smartly. And we can do everything to actually, not only protect, but actually invest in. The Great America Outdoors act is up for renewal. That's fully supported by this administration. There are a number of initiatives, and one coming right around the corner. The USA 250 celebration. One of the executive orders asks every agency, including every department within the Department of Interior, every bureau, what are we doing to get ready in our parks and around the country and in all of our beautiful places to help America celebrate USA250. So that's a big part of what we do. And of course, people may not also realize that the territories are part of Interior. So American Samoa, Guam, Marianas Island, US Virgin Islands. These are all territories that participate. Met with all the governors from those territories last week here in D.C. along with the governor of Puerto Rico. We span across over 14 time zones in and fabulous, beautiful things. And that celebration of USA is going to be touching all of those.
- [17:02]
John Bickley
We have had a lot of cost cutting measures being implemented and some requests from each of the departments to figure out ways that they can more efficiently handle their missions. How are you handling that with everyone under your charge?
- [17:17]
Doug Burgum
Well, first of all, I know that there's a way that we can deliver more efficient government. I know that we have to do that because right now, in this last year, the Biden administration, a $2 trillion deficit in one year. Trillions are hard for Americans to think about. But a trillion is a thousand billion. A thousand billion. So we had $2,000 billion dollars. We spent more than what we brought in. And there's a lot of things we can do that I talked about to drive revenue up. And whether that's more productive use of our public lands, whether that's for energy or timber or critical mineral development, we can drive re up. The public participates in that. Those revenues can go to pay down debt. They could go to pay into the sovereign wealth fund for our future. But we also have to reduce expenses. And the idea is to get revenue up by a trillion, get expenses down by a trillion. So we got to cut a thousand billion. And how do we do that in North Dakota? My first four months, I came from the private sector. My first four months in office, we worked together with the legislature and others. We cut 27% out of the general fund in the first four months. And all the trains ran on time. And in the process, we focused on trying to make sure that we gave everybody that was working for us the tools so that they could have more meaningful and more purposeful jobs and so we can make government better and less expensive at the same time. Those two things can happen. And I'm excited about the work that Doge is doing because they're setting a fast pace and that's what it's going to take to turn something that is this scale. The scale the federal government is enormous. And the action that's going on right now gives me hope that we're actually going to be able to make a historic change in right sizing the government. And that's a win. That's a win for everyone, for their kids and their grandkids. Because if we balance the budget, that's going to lower interest rates for sure. And then everybody's mortgage is going to cost less, your car payments costing less, your taxes should cost less. I mean, the biggest item right now in the federal government is interest on the debt. I mean, that's the number one expense. So, you know, if we don't tackle some of these core fundamental issues that are a real threat to the future of this country, we're not going to have a future to debate about. So I'm excited that there's real focus and attention on getting the fiscal house in order here, and it gets me very optimistic about our future.
- [19:38]
John Bickley
Well, that's a perfect button on this interview, so we'll leave it there. Secretary, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
- [19:45]
Doug Burgum
Well, likewise, John. And thanks for having me on the show today and grateful for all you do and grateful for your audience. You got such a loyal, great audience that's always learning from you. So thanks for letting me a small.
- [19:55]
John Bickley
Part of it and thank you so much. We can't thank our audience enough either. That was Doug Burgram, secretary of the Interior, and this has been a weekend edition of MORNING wire.