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.
Chapter 1: What is Secretary Doug Burgum's agenda for the Interior Department?
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 Burgum to hammer out his plan to use energy dominance to defeat China and help President Trump end 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.
Well, great to be with you, John. Thank you for having me on your show.
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?
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, it's 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. And then the second thing is you got to You got to hire a great team.
And I look around that room and a 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.
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Chapter 2: How does the Trump administration plan to achieve energy dominance?
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 listeners' sake, a Secretary of the Interior is responsible for managing nearly one-fifth of the lands and waters of the U.S. 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?
Well, I'm 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 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 US energy policy, and that's gonna 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 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. And when we do things like that, like be smart about how we're doing timber harvesting from mature forest, 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.
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