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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe.
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--:-- 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: 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 in wars.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor and 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.
--:-- Doug Burgum: Thank you so much for having me on your show.
--:-- 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?
--:-- 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.
--:-- John Bickley: So that's clear direction. So that's great. Then the second thing is 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.
--:-- Doug Burgum: 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, 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: 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.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: 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?
--:-- Doug Burgum: 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, ask 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.
--:-- 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?
--:-- Doug Burgum: 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, ask 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.
--:-- John Bickley: 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?
--:-- Doug Burgum: 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I wanted to ask you specifically about nuclear. And 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 U.S. has?
--:-- Doug Burgum: Mid 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. You have to 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.
--:-- 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 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?
--:-- 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 available energy on the market for americans.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Trump has launched a flood of initiatives It 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?
--:-- Doug Burgum: Well, we play it 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 the special places that we have, the last best places, we're doing a fantastic job.
--:-- 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.
--:-- 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've got such a loyal, great audience that's always learning from you. So thanks for letting me be a small part of it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thank you so much. We can't thank our audience enough either. That was Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
