First in the Nation 2024: Governor Doug Burgum

On October 12, 2023, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, visited Dartmouth to speak at a forum hosted by the Rockefeller Center through its “Path to the Presidency” series of programming. Associate Editor of The Dartmouth Review Dalton A. Swenson interviewed Governor Burgum earlier that day.

TDR: Governor, thank you for taking the time to sit down with The Review. I want to start with a pressing matter. Foreign policy is on the minds of many Americans. Russia is in a long and exhausting war with Ukraine, and just this past weekend, the terrorist organization Hamas launched a catastrophic attack on the people of Israel. To what extent must the United States support Ukraine and Israel? 

DB: Well, when I’m your president, these attacks won’t be happening. We’d actually have a policy of deterrence. Reagan taught us all about peace through strength. In the Biden administration, what we’ve seen is weakness through appeasement. The appeasement starting under the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, which the Biden administration has tried to pick up and carry forward, has had disastrous results. We are unfreezing billions of dollars for Iran, the world’s largest supporter of terrorism. I think about them as the parent company; Hamas, Hezbollah as subsidiaries. The president held a press conference yesterday and didn’t even mention the Iranian regime that’s sponsoring the terrorism. The point is we’re in a proxy war, with 25 Americans who died. We have more Americans who were held hostage, and this is Iran’s war on Israel and America. 

There are some people in both the Democrat and Republican parties that want to have an isolationist view. They’ve been caught up with politicians telling them that we’re in a world of scarcity and weakness, not abundance and strength. And if we are engaged in supporting our allies, somehow that’s going to be bad for America. And that somehow it’s going to hurt America or hurt American citizens. I get the people that are struggling under the weight of Biden’s inflation and the economic insecurity. I understand that, but we have to have someone in the bully pulpit who can help articulate the actual economic fact that when our allies are safe and prosperous, America is safe and more prosperous. We absolutely have to help our allies around the world. 

A non-NATO country was going to somehow take out over half of a peer competitor’s military capability. In 18 months, the 6,700 tanks, the ships that they’ve sunk, the submarine that they sunk. All this capability that they’ve destroyed, and we never sent a soldier. This is for like three and a half percent of our defense budget. This is the biggest military bargain we’ve ever had.

I fully support that we continue to support the Ukrainian people because a win for Putin is actually a win for China and that’s even our bigger threat. We’re in a cold war with China and the Biden administration won’t even say that out loud. All of these folks are coordinating together: Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China are all in the same team. North Korea is supplying supplies and armaments to Russia. Iran is providing armed drones to Russia. And Biden himself unfroze $6 billion for Iran. So it’s the Biden administration basically funding both sides of this war because when we support Iran, they’re providing resources to Russia and Hamas. We should only be fighting on one side of this war, not two. 

[W]e have to have someone in the bully pulpit who can help articulate the actual economic fact that when our allies are safe and prosperous, America is safe and more prosperous. We absolutely have to help our allies around the world. 

TDR: How has being governor of the small state of North Dakota prepared you to be leader of the free world, especially considering the turmoil around the globe?

DB: What’s prepared me is my life in the private sector where I understand technology, which is every company in every industry. And it has to change the military and the way we deliver government services. That small startup that I got involved with shortly after college grew to have customers in 132 countries. 

I grew up and spent most of my life in North Dakota, where two cores of our economy are food and energy. We’re deeply involved in global markets, have been since I was a kid. Any farmer in North Dakota will tell you what the price of soybeans is in Brazil today because we’re either supplying or competing with these global competitors. In terms of national defense, we’re on the front line because some of the nation’s largest stores of missiles are in North Dakota. The ones that are pointed at North Korea and Russia are based in North Dakota. We have two of the biggest air bases in the nation. We’ve got two of the three legs of the strategic triad. 

And we’re a border state. Part of national security is border security. We have a 360-mile-long border, so I’ve seen how the challenges at the Southern border are affecting the resources on borders like here in New Hampshire and North Dakota. But we’ve also had troops down at the Southern border throughout my time as governor. We’ve helped out Republican governors with this invasion that we’re having six and a half million people have come in in the last two and a half years. 

With that we’ve watched the equivalent of five Vietnams’ worth of mass casualties of overdose deaths since Joe Biden took office. I mean, we’re averaging 300 a day, which is sons and daughters and nieces and nephews. I’d be surprised if there isn’t somebody who knows someone who’s lost life to a fentanyl overdose. We’re taking mass casualties from fentanyl coming from China, across an open border. 

Everything in my life has prepared me for this moment. All I’ve ever done has been working as a CEO or executive. I have no interest in being a senator or a politician or a cabinet leader. I’m an executive who builds high-performing teams and gets the job done. 

I also understand, as a governor, how many ways the federal government is out of their lane. There’s a certain set of things that the federal government is set and required to do, as delegated to them from places like your home state, New Hampshire, the ninth signer on the constitution. The 10th Amendment says duties not delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people.

But everyone says we need to drain the swamp. No, the way you drain the swamp is return the power to the people and states and keep the federal government in their lane. What the president is supposed to do is the economy, energy, and national security. That’s what we announced we’re running on day one, and the events of the last three and a half months just reaffirm that we had already identified the most important issues to Americans. You return the power to the states. You get our economy humming. That’s how you win this cold war we’re in with China. We need a strong economy. You do all those things and you’re gonna improve every American life. 

No, the way you drain the swamp is return the power to the people and states and keep the federal government in their lane. What the president is supposed to do is the economy, energy, and national security.

TDR: Is Donald Trump a liability for the Republican Party? 

DB: Every person in our party has strengths and liabilities. There certainly was a revolution in 2016 and I was an outsider like Donald Trump who was elected in 2016. There’s a lot of things I like about outsiders coming into government and bringing a fresh perspective. But if you look at the election results in ’18, ’20, and ’22, it hasn’t been what any of us in the Republican Party would hope for, whether in terms of the Senate, the House, or regaining the presidency. 

In North Dakota, we won by over 40 points in 2016, and were reelected in 2020 by over 40 points. We delivered and worked for everybody. When there’s a blizzard in North Dakota, we plow the roads for independents and Democrats and Republicans. What we need right now in the White House is someone who understands our economy. Someone who, like myself, has created more jobs than everybody else on the debate stage. I’ve been making payroll since my mid-twenties, which nobody else on the stage can say that. Some of the folks never created a job and never paid payroll. 

You’re asking a question about liability. Part of being an asset is being able to win. If you want to win a national election, want to win a swing state, you’ve got to have Republicans and independents vote for you. That means we’ve got to have solutions that raise everybody up. And that’s why I say I’ll never be a senator or congressman. They put on their jersey and lob insults at each other. People that are in the executive branch have to lead. They have to unite people. They have to find solutions. They have to move this country forward. That’s what I’ve done in every company. Ask anyone who’s worked with me and you’ll find that people say he empowered people. He inspired trust in everyone. That’s what I’ve done in North Dakota, and that’s what we can do going forward for this country. 

TDR: The Republican Party, specifically in the House of Representatives, is as divided and chaotic as it has been in a long time. Did you support Matt Gaetz’s move to oust speaker Kevin McCarthy? And if you were president, how would you unite the party to avoid legislative drama?

DB: One thing I’ve learned as governor of the state is that you’re the leader of all the people, but there are three branches of government. It doesn’t help sometimes being a pundit and being a critic from the side about what the other branch should do. Because some of these things have to work out on their own. 

But when you talk about things that are liabilities and assets, what the American people need to see from the Republican Party right now is leadership. We can’t have infighting and squabbling over things, especially with the horrific events that just happened in Israel. We need to make sure that we’ve got Republican leadership that’s demonstrating to this country that we can lead in that chamber, at a time when we’ve got an administration that’s pursuing an appeasement policy. It is important that the chamber pick leadership and get back in the game and do the job of leading because we want to win elections and more House seats in 2024. We better show the American people that we know how to lead. 

TDR: Why should a college student, who otherwise does not follow politics and does not seem to be concerned about who the president is, take time out of their busy schedule to register to vote for you?

DB: If they care about their future and this country’s future, if they care about their economic opportunity, if they care about living in a world of abundance versus a world of scarcity, if they care about living in a nation that prioritizes innovation over regulation, freedom over control, then I would say, yeah, take the time to register. 

When I had people working for me around the world, people didn’t have the right to vote, you know? People that have never had the right to vote and they get a chance, they’ll line up and stand for hours. They’ll crawl over glass because this is a gift that they’ve been given. It’s amazing to me that we would have anybody going to any college in our country, much less one of the top institutions in the country, that wouldn’t come out of it saying they need to participate in democracy. It’s a gift that we have as Americans to have a voice in our future and everybody should exercise it. 

TDR: You are in New Hampshire, a purple state that takes its voting very seriously, as I’m sure you’ve figured out so far. Republicans have not won the state since George Bush did in 2000, and Democrats are increasingly winning federal elections here with greater margins. How can you win over New Hampshire’s many independent voters and win the state?

DB: First of all, I want to say thank you to all the people of New Hampshire that we’ve met. The First in the Nation primary is not just an honor, it’s essential. This is how democracy works. We’re at a critical point because there is a lot of power concentrated across big media, social media, and political parties. Those groups are trying to nationalize the primary process. They’re trying to narrow the field before the voting starts. Theodore Roosevelt famously fought against the big media and newspapers; he fought against the insiders and the smoke-filled rooms and the good ole boy networks. 

New Hampshire picks presidents. The people in New Hampshire that come to hear us in town hall meetings, like we’re going to hold here today on campus, are the ones who decide who the president is. On behalf of every New Hampshire voter, I reject calls for people to drop out of the race. Competition’s good for the American people. It’s good for the Republican Party and it’s great for our country when people get a chance to see their choices. People who think that this race is already over, maybe we should just cancel the rest of the NFL season too because somebody’s already picked the Super Bowl winner in Las Vegas. I think New Hampshireans know that leads change, candidates go up and down, and that most times in the lead states of Iowa, New Hampshire, like five out of seven times the person who wins is not the person who was leading two to four weeks out for the vote. Again, I just say thank you to the citizens of New Hampshire who were so engaged in this important process of being the First in the Nation primary. 

New Hampshire picks presidents. The people in New Hampshire that come to hear us in town hall meetings, like we’re going to hold here today on campus, are the ones who decide who the president is. On behalf of every New Hampshire voter, I reject calls for people to drop out of the race.

TDR: On that subject, is there a time in the near future when you’ll consider dropping out or stepping aside? What will it take for you to step aside, especially when not gaining in the polls?

DB: Well, we are gaining ground in the polls and we’ll continue to. We’re the least known of any of the candidates. If we’ve got among the highest favorables, but are the least well-known, when our awareness goes up, our polling numbers go up. Take whatever number you see today and double or triple it, because when our name recognition goes up, we’re going to keep climbing in the polls. 

This morning was part of the historic process. We went to the state house in Concord and we filed to be on the ballot in New Hampshire. There’s no talk of anything other than charging ahead and letting the voters decide in Iowa and New Hampshire. I would just say to the pundits around the nation that are calling for people to drop out before the voting starts: 98% of the Republican delegates will still be available after New Hampshire is done. Primaries and voters should narrow the field, not pundits. 

TDR: Students at Dartmouth are all too familiar with the disruptions caused to learning by the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s been indication that children have experienced significant learning loss caused by pandemic policies. Teachers’ unions have defended their decisions despite decreasing test stores throughout the country. What would you have done differently if you had been president at the time? How would your administration address learning loss and improve teaching standards?

DB: If you want to think about what I would have done as president, you just have to look at what we did in North Dakota. We came to an understanding pretty early on that this could be deadly for elderly and people with underlying health conditions and was not a matter of life or death for the majority of young people. In North Dakota, we never had a stay at home order. We never locked down. We managed the thing with a focus on what we called the VP3, the vulnerable population protection plan. 

By the summer after COVID hit, our schools were open for summer school and the entire next school year. And there’s a report that we had among the highest SAT median scores in the nation in North Dakota. Pulling kids out of school for a year and a half, driven by the unions, not a good thing. 

In North Dakota, we’ve always focused on the student being the customer. We created a K-12 coordinating council. The teacher’s unions, the leadership, the superintendents, and the school boards, these different associations are like unions. They all fight against each other. These groups don’t even agree, much less the legislature, much less the parents, much less educational professionals that have a say about how to actually advance education. We’ve got them all on a committee. Wherever it goes out of hand, we remember: the customer is the student. We’re designing schools and school experiences for students. And we’re driving innovation across every school. 

People talk about school choice, but if your school choice is the teacher union school and a different school, you’ll maybe get a choice, but you still may have two bad choices. We’re trying to make every choice a good choice. We’re trying to make every school an innovation school in North Dakota by cutting red tape. We’ve cut red tape to allow our public schools to be free from burdens. Keep the student at the center of the equation. 

TDR: At Dartmouth and elsewhere in the country, artificial intelligence technologies are increasingly being discussed and developed. Their possibilities pose many potential benefits, but also many unknown challenges. How do you view the federal government’s role in formulating a response?

DB: Having spent a career in software, I’ve long known that the greatest invention to date to expand human capability is software. Here we’ve got AI, which is the evolution of software, which doesn’t have an upper limit. The exponential increase that we’re seeing right now in the capability of these AI models is unbelievable. It’s going to change, just like technology R&D has in our country, every job. Every company, every industry needs to change, the government needs to change how we think about security, but AI is going to transform things like never before. 

It’s an incredible time to be a young person today, but it has to change the way we think about universities and delivering education and how we interact with these tools. It is going to change entire professions, legal and medicine in particular, where you’ve got years and years of learning to quote, become an expert, to work in a field. That whole model is blown up upside down. 

We just got done with our legislative session. We had a two day offsite with all our cabinet leaders. The whole offsite after the session got done was on AI. We had agencies that said we didn’t get all the FTEs and budget we wanted. We didn’t get those extra people, but what if every person in your agency today had a copilot who spoke 26 languages, knew how to code, would work 24/7, work on holidays, require no benefits, no office space. What would that do to your productivity? What would that do to automate the approaches that we need? What would it do to actually eliminate the need for a bunch of the red tape? 

We have to think about this thing as a tool. Yes, it could be a weapon and we need regulations. But as I said earlier, our whole approach to revitalizing our economy, winning the cold war with China, creating economic opportunity, is through innovation. Regulation is a key part of the inflation that’s choking our country, and AI is at the center. But if anybody tells you that we had to stop development on AI it’s probably a Chinese bot, because they’re very concerned that we’ve got to lead here in our ability to deliver this. 

We have to think about [AI] as a tool. Yes, it could be a weapon and we need regulations. But as I said earlier, our whole approach to revitalizing our economy, winning the cold war with China, creating economic opportunity, is through innovation. Regulation is a key part of the inflation that’s choking our country, and AI is at the center.

It’s going to definitely transform health care, and anybody that’s a college aged person today, you got to plan on living to be a hundred years old because we’re going to eliminate entire disease classes with accelerated testing of new solutions to what were intractable and chronic healthcare problems. It’s going to get solved because we’re expanding human capability at a rate that people really don’t comprehend. That’s why we need leadership in the White House that understands technology and the economy so that we can get out of these human conflicts, where we’re essentially competing over scarce resources, and move on to a world of abundance in a role of opportunity. It’s an exciting time, and when I’m your president, that’s what I’ll be focusing on. 

TDR: Thank you for your time, Governor. 

DB: Thank you.