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Doug Burgum: “Agriculture was in decline [in North Dakota].”

Featuring: Doug Burgum, Republican | U.S. Secretary of the Interior | National

Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America

Published September 3, 2025 | Video Starts at 37:30

We were one of the only states that had a lower population in the 80s. Than we had in the 1930s. We were. Because there was, there weren't jobs there. I mean, Agriculture was in decline [in North Dakota]. The oil industry hadn't begun yet. The energy industries in North Dakota. So it was, people were like, this state is, you know, going down. (37:30–37:32)

CLAIM

Asserts that the agricultural industry in North Dakota was declining during the 1980s.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Doug Burgum

“China has permitted over 100 gigawatts of coal in the last 12 months.”
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“Most of [the Strategic Petroleum Reserve draining] happened 400 million barrels taken out of it in the lead up to the midterms.”
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“Joe Biden would write an executive order...he just wiped $10 trillion off the balance sheet.”
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“Department of Interior, 500 million acres of land, 700 million acres of subsurface, 2.5 billion of undersea offshore rich with critical…”
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“Interior is the largest balance sheet in the world, which it is.”
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“We're burning more timber every year in America than we harvest.”
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“The fires in California have released more CO2 than all of their efforts to control CO2.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 09:51-09:57
“80% of Nevada is federal land.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 11:27-11:29
“The US has about 80,000 missing in action sailors and soldiers since the Revolutionary War. Half of those 40,000 of those are Pacific…”
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“We sanctioned Alaska more than Iran.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 50:39-50:43
“President Trump formally created by executive order the Energy National Energy Dominance Council.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 00:42-00:53
“Under the Biden administration there were sanctions on Iran and some sanctions on Russia.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 03:01-03:06
“Joe Biden turned the Strategic Petroleum Reserve into his own personal political petroleum reserve.”
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“Coal assets in its raw form just on federal land...it's $8 trillion is what it's worth.”
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“Joe Biden said it out loud, you know, no more drilling on federal land.”
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“The fuel load buildup that's occurred in American forest can actually go back to the Clinton era.”
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“By shutting down our forests, we killed our position in the timber milling position.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 07:57-08:04
“The amount of timber that we've stopped harvesting equals about the amount that we now import.”
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“President Trump signed an executive order to bring together the five forest firefighting units.”
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“We've permitted three mines in Nevada in the last several months.”
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“The Department of Defense made a direct equity investment in a US Critical minerals mine and processing plant, Mountain Pass.”
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“We did permit a mine in Arizona that had been trying to get a permit for 29 years.”
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“20 to 30% of every government employee is being consumed by some mind numbing, soul sucking work.”
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“In Interior alone, there are 36,000 grants and contracts, and that amount may have doubled during the Biden administration.”
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“We discovered that there were some of these grant NGOs where we were 99% of their revenue.”
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“They also had 30% in overhead, which included lobbyists lobbying for a bigger Grant.”
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“In the 1880s and 1900s, that's when North Dakota was really being settled by immigrants largely from Scandinavia and Germany.”
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“They started the rural electric for two communities around there in 1950.”
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“The price of oil doubled, and people couldn't afford to heat their homes.”
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“People in North Dakota started heating their homes with wood.”
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“It was the very beginning of the PC software industry. It was just getting going.”
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“Three and a half years before Apple or Microsoft went public.”
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“North Dakota was one of the only states that had a lower population in the 80s than in the 1930s.”
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“The oil industry hadn't begun yet [in North Dakota].”
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“We started with less than 10 [employees].”
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“By the time we got acquired, we had 1200 people working in Fargo, 400 rest in North America and 400 rest of the world.”
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“When we got acquired, [Fargo] was the second largest campus in the world [for Microsoft].”
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“We did an all stock deal. Stock for Stock. It was 1.1 share of Microsoft for one share of Great Plains.”
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“Microsoft was about 400 billion in market cap and now it's 3.5 trillion.”
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“The US Geological Survey then populates information to our systems which then are picked up by people like Apple Maps, Google Maps.”
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“The state of North Dakota spend[s] on K12... a billion dollars a year.”
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“We were engaged in over 30 different legal battles with the federal government.”
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“Alaska had 68 executive orders by the Biden administration against it.”
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“Biden was a wind in our face... my job changed completely when the Biden administration came in because they were trying to shut us down.”
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“We have the resources, we have the innovation. We have the ability to put energy together with the manufacturing intelligence.”
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