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Doug Burgum: “We were engaged in over 30 different legal battles with the…”

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 50:21

It was more about trying to get the word out, because we were under assault in North Dakota as an energy resource state under the Biden administration. By the, the time I left, We were engaged in over 30 different legal battles with the federal government. So I was feeling it. And I'd been chair of Western governors, and I knew that the other public land states that are large, you know, Alaska, Alaska had 68 executive orders by the Biden administration against it. (50:21–50:25)

CLAIM

Asserts that North Dakota was involved in over 30 legal battles with the federal government.

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.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 02:44-02:52
“Most of [the Strategic Petroleum Reserve draining] happened 400 million barrels taken out of it in the lead up to the midterms.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 04:01-04:08
“Joe Biden would write an executive order...he just wiped $10 trillion off the balance sheet.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 04:55-05:07
“Department of Interior, 500 million acres of land, 700 million acres of subsurface, 2.5 billion of undersea offshore rich with critical…”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 05:59-06:13
“Interior is the largest balance sheet in the world, which it is.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 06:19-06:24
“We're burning more timber every year in America than we harvest.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 08:59-09:04
“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…”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 25:39-25:56
“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.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 03:54-04:01
“Coal assets in its raw form just on federal land...it's $8 trillion is what it's worth.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 05:11-05:22
“Joe Biden said it out loud, you know, no more drilling on federal land.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 06:58-07:03
“The fuel load buildup that's occurred in American forest can actually go back to the Clinton era.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 07:35-07:41
“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.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 09:26-09:32
“President Trump signed an executive order to bring together the five forest firefighting units.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 10:03-10:11
“We've permitted three mines in Nevada in the last several months.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 11:29-11:34
“The Department of Defense made a direct equity investment in a US Critical minerals mine and processing plant, Mountain Pass.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 12:19-12:30
“We did permit a mine in Arizona that had been trying to get a permit for 29 years.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 12:54-12:59
“20 to 30% of every government employee is being consumed by some mind numbing, soul sucking work.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 15:12-15:20
“In Interior alone, there are 36,000 grants and contracts, and that amount may have doubled during the Biden administration.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 16:39-16:50
“We discovered that there were some of these grant NGOs where we were 99% of their revenue.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 17:25-17:31
“They also had 30% in overhead, which included lobbyists lobbying for a bigger Grant.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 17:35-17:41
“In the 1880s and 1900s, that's when North Dakota was really being settled by immigrants largely from Scandinavia and Germany.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 21:58-22:07
“They started the rural electric for two communities around there in 1950.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 22:53-22:58
“The price of oil doubled, and people couldn't afford to heat their homes.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 29:00-29:05
“People in North Dakota started heating their homes with wood.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 29:07-29:11
“It was the very beginning of the PC software industry. It was just getting going.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 33:37-33:41
“Three and a half years before Apple or Microsoft went public.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 33:42-33:46
“North Dakota was one of the only states that had a lower population in the 80s than in the 1930s.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 37:23-37:27
“Agriculture was in decline [in North Dakota].”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 37:30-37:32
“The oil industry hadn't begun yet [in North Dakota].”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 37:31-37:34
“We started with less than 10 [employees].”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 39:55-39:57
“By the time we got acquired, we had 1200 people working in Fargo, 400 rest in North America and 400 rest of the world.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 39:59-40:07
“When we got acquired, [Fargo] was the second largest campus in the world [for Microsoft].”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 40:28-40:31
“We did an all stock deal. Stock for Stock. It was 1.1 share of Microsoft for one share of Great Plains.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 40:43-40:52
“Microsoft was about 400 billion in market cap and now it's 3.5 trillion.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 42:17-42:22
“President Trump did an executive order that empowered me as secretary to make that official [renaming the Gulf of America].”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 43:11-43:19
“The US Geological Survey then populates information to our systems which then are picked up by people like Apple Maps, Google Maps.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 43:52-44:01
“We doubled that income from 9 billion to 18 billion.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 46:21-46:24
“The state of North Dakota spend[s] on K12... a billion dollars a year.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 48:02-48:13
“Alaska had 68 executive orders by the Biden administration against it.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 50:34-50:39
“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.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 56:01-56:14
“We have the resources, we have the innovation. We have the ability to put energy together with the manufacturing intelligence.”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 56:36-56:47
“That's part of what the Trump administration is doing with permitting is really like stop getting in the way of capital plus innovation…”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 57:12-57:21
“I think the golden age of America is coming. And I think we've got the right formula of capital infusion, deregulation and innovation coming…”
Doug Burgum on Fentanyl Border, Alaska Sanctions, China's Gas Station, & Gulf of America | Uploaded September 3, 2025 | 57:24-57:34