All right, welcome back everyone. It's time to meet the Interior Secretary. We knew him as a Governor.
Has he changed that much in 100 days? Now he's Interior Secretary. With it also, you also have your job description includes part of energy, right Governor Bergen? Yeah, Secretary Bergen? Yeah, well I love Governor, of course. Yeah, we have a dual role, Secretary of Interior, but also Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council that President Trump created by executive order.
So tell me about your 100 days. Well, first of all, it's been fantastic. The historic President Trump is moving at a speed and a pace that no President has ever moved before. And I think for the public, they need to understand because they hear about EOs, executive orders.
Each of those executive orders that he signed, hundreds of them. In the second paragraph, it has got specific directions often for a Cabinet Secretary. The Secretary of Interior shall, not may, shall do XYZ and then has a date.
Sometimes that date is 15 days or 30 days out. So the speed at which he's providing clear direction for his leadership team. So he's empowering all of us with clear direction.
And then he holds everybody accountable. And this is leadership in action. And this is the reason why this administration is getting so much done. You have such a unique background in that you know the tech world, you know the West Coast, you know the ranching world.
I've seen it in North Dakota. And then you know what it's like to run a business, then you know what it's like to run a state. So now they told you to basically use your energy and knowledge of this country and of land and make it work.
I think one of the things that stands out with me is that you have a you're working well with Chris Wright on energy. What have you done to expand drilling? Also, coal is now playing a role. Well, part of the mandate is not just drill, baby, drill, which President Trump was really a shorthand for. We've got to have U.S. energy production. U.S. energy production is not just an industry.
It's the foundation of all other industries. And if we've got high prices for energy and not enough of it, then the cost of everything, the foods you eat, the car you drive, the clothes on your back all go up. So with President Trump wanting to make America affordable again, said we've got to drive energy. But the second piece is the wars that we've been involved in overseas as from a proxy standpoint, whether it's Iran funding 24 terror groups or the conflict with with Russia and Ukraine. Those are being funded by Russian oil sales and Iranian Iranian oil sales.
And often they're selling those on the black market, if you will, the dark fleet to China. So, you know, we've turned our the Biden administration, turned Russia and Iran into a discount gas stations for China. So it's the worst of all worlds with the policies of the Biden administration being anti U.S. energy. We're helping our adversaries hurting America and hurting Americans. And Europe needs natural gas because they couldn't buy it from Europe. Japan needs natural gas because it couldn't buy excuse me from Russia. And that we were just not answering. We stopped we stopped exporting it. And Biden didn't even know.
That's another scandal. What kind of exactly selling energy to our friends and allies is a core principle of President Trump. And when we do that, it's great for asking for for free.
No, they'll just say we'd want a customer we can depend on. And we have it. Now, I know what you're doing. When are we going to feel the impact of what you're doing? Well, I think if the people in the industry are already feeling that we've the permitting reform that we've announced, some of these permits that would take a year to get, we're saying that our goal is to get them done in two weeks.
Something to take to two years. An environmental study, an ESA study takes two years. We're saying we are targeting getting getting those permits out in 30 days. Your view of drilling on on federal land? Well, federal land is not people and they say the word like that. They think they're going to somehow drill in the national in a national park. No, all of our best, beautiful places are protected.
But I don't think people understand the scope. Just an interior. If Interior was a standalone company, it would have the largest balance sheet in the world. Five hundred million acres of public lands. Seven hundred million acres of subsurface and two point five billion of offshore. So we can be developing resources on public lands, whether it's, you know, grazing for agriculture, whether it's timber production to put us back in the game where we're not importing most of our lumber into our country. Baseload and metallurgical coal. We need metallurgical coal for producing steel. That lot of that comes from federal lands. It's in an oil and gas, of course, but also critical minerals. So we have this massive balance sheet of resources.
And starting with Obama and then with the Biden administration, they basically said, we're not going to cut a tree. We're not going to mine in this country. We're not going to drill for oil and gas. So it's not just mine, baby, mine. It's also map, baby, map, figure out where the resources are. And then and then it's drill, baby, drill, map, baby, map and mine, baby, mine, because we've got to get back in the mining business because we're right now. China has a chokehold on America because they're controlling on the critical minerals. Yeah. In terms of magnets, I didn't know the magnets were so vital.
You would know that because that's your background. But they have them. And they're threatening South Korea.
If they sell them to us, they're going to cut them off. So fascinating time when we talk about rare earth in America. I keep hearing about Nevada. Now, Utah.
And we also hear about Minnesota. What do you do if you have a Democratic governor who says, I don't like the I don't like the damage strip mining does to my state? What power do you have? Well, we have we have President Trump declared this a national energy emergency appropriately because we don't have enough electricity to power our electrical grid. And we need electricity to win the arms race against China.
He is part of that national energy emergency is that we have to be able to have secure supply chains. And so with that, we've got additional emergency powers that are allowed to expedite doing that. And we could still meet every environmental rule.
We're not creating shortcuts. President Trump has said over and over again, and we we we will continue to have the cleanest air, the cleanest water, the best soil health in the world here in America. We've got the strictest rules. We can do both of these things. We can produce we can mine here. We can produce minerals here. We can cut timber here.
We can do all of that thing and still take care of the environment. I hope so. Certain people just don't want to hear that, as you know.
And I guess it must be frustrating. We're talking to Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum about what's going on. The dynamics of the cabinet, even these and the advisers. You know, we hear about Elon Musk getting a shouting out to John Duffy and Rubio and Musk locking horns. And then Musk and secretary.
And it's been widely reported, not tonight, of Treasury Besset going at it with Elon. You've been in a lot of boardrooms. You're always around important people, rich, successful people.
Describe the dynamics. Well, I would say that the thing that's been fantastic about President Trump's cabinet is that that this is a group that's all pulling in the same direction. Everybody's here because they believe in the America first agenda. And and whether it doesn't matter what topic, energy, trade, border, everybody's on the same page. And I've what I've seen and what I've experienced is with these other cabinet agencies that everybody's willing to pick up the phone, call each other, talk on a first name basis. It's not like schedule a meeting two weeks later. It's like, you know, I mean, I won this morning. You know, call I call Lee Zeldin.
He picks up the phone. Five minutes. We've solved the problem. So the level of collaboration breaking down the barriers between the silos has been has been been absolutely fantastic. But sometimes I think successful people will differ on ways to do things. Is that necessarily bad?
It's not bad at all. And of course, when, you know, the we talk about, you know, I spent decades in the tech industry in the tech industry. You know, you can imagine, you know, think of like Steve Jobs and the arguments. No, I mean, it's like, you know, books and movies have been made about this stuff. But part of part of when you've got people that are brilliant and innovative and want to get stuff done, moving with urgency, you're going to have some passion behind it. But I don't there's nothing that's wrong with conflict. It's if people, people, people agree on the objective and disagree on how to get there. Then those discussions, I mean, think of Lincoln. I mean, Lincoln's whole cabinet was called team of rivals who was viewed as a strength, not as a weakness while at war with the other half of the country. So you were asked by the military to turn over a portion of land at the border.
Of course, you did it. What was that about? Well, I wouldn't say asked. I mean, we were told we were like, hey, have you heard about this thing with the Roosevelt reservation? This goes back to Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, signed a piece of legislation. He had the foresight and the wisdom to understand in his original order on the southwestern border.
He said, wow, this is unprotected. We've got to defend across. These were states that were just coming into the country. Still, Arizona, New Mexico were territories becoming states. He said, let's reserve 60 feet of this border from the from New Mexico, Arizona, California, the West Coast. And they called it the Roosevelt reservation that that strip could be turned over by the secretary of interior through through a secretarial order to the Department of Defense.
All right. Because then if someone steps on there, they're they're stepping on a military installation. Now they can be detained by the military. Now they can. So it was your knowledge of Roosevelt's 1907 rule law. Well, it's a team.
Let's call it a team effort. But yes, this is Roosevelt coming back. And then we got a president, President Trump today who's got both the common sense and the courage to say we're going to we're going to secure our border. But when Roosevelt wrote about initially, he said smuggling, he said, you know, in case there's a time when you stop smuggling into our country. Well, that was a he wasn't thinking about fentanyl and he may not have been thinking about the mass invasion and the mass casualties we've had from all the drug overdose in our country. But he was thinking about goods moving illegally and whether that's human trafficking or drug trafficking.
Tremendous foresight. But now the combination of Roosevelt and Trump connecting each other, us executing on this. And I'm down there talking to the the people on the border. When I was governor, we had North North Dakota National Guard troops down there.
And when I was down there visiting our troops, the the under Biden, the it was the Border Patrol was like defunding the police. They weren't hiring open position. People were demoralized. They were taking early retirement. I talked to those folks down there today and they're telling now they're saying they've gone from I would never have my kid go into this business. I literally had a story two weeks ago where one of them said, when my son turns 18, he's signing up for the Border Patrol.
He'll be the third generation in our family. We've never been more supported in my entire and they're bringing back the ones that got fired because of the vaccine. Yeah. No, they're the morale is high. The border is secure. But now the sophistication at that border and part of us having that Roosevelt reservation and working with the DOD because just in the one area that I was at on the Texas, New Mexico border area, there have been over 3000 drone incursions run by the cartel. The cartels are super well financed and they've got the ability to fly over the United States, scout where our our people are and and then still try to still try to manipulate. And whether they're flying drugs in or they're using that to find where there's weaknesses, where they can smuggle humans in, we've still the battle is still going on, even though the number the numbers are down tremendously.
We've still got a border to your goal oriented guy, very organized. So at the end of the year, do you have a list of things that you want to accomplish or is there so much to accomplish? You've got to take it at a smaller increment. Well, it's a year seems like a century away from now. It's only been 100 days. It's been 100. You haven't been there 100. No, we've not. But we're we are with the confirmation been here just a little less than 90 days.
But we've been at it and our team is working hard. And again, whether it's on protecting our beautiful national parks, making sure that we're going to be open, getting ready for the USA 250 because this interior also controls is responsible for everything here on the National Mall. And so whether it's our historic sites around the country that celebrate America's very beginning or whether it's our amazing national parks and U.S. fish and wildlife refuges.
Again, I was just down at one of those amazing locations. We renamed it for Jocelyn Nungare. You know, again, the tragedy of a 12 year old girl losing her life at the hands of illegal people that were in this country illegally.
That is a thing. But President Trump and his joint address to chambers of commerce said we're going to never forget Jocelyn Nungare. And the reason why we have why we have to protect our borders and protect every child should be safe in this country. And to be there with her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother were all there at the renaming of along with dozens of other family members. But Jocelyn is a child loved and wanted to protect animals.
And what a better fitting President Trump who cares about every American saying, hey, we should a sanctuary is a place that should be named after her because every American should feel safe in their home. You liking the job? I'm loving the job.
I absolutely love the job. And as coming from a Western resources governor where you had Parks and Rec, had Game and Fish, had mineral resources, had a border, had all the things that we're dealing with right now at all maps. And people said, you've done everything. I said, no, we didn't have any offshore drilling in North Dakota. But that's a big thing we did. We're able to reverse 625 million acres of offshore. The Biden administration said we're never going to develop it. That was like stealing trillions of dollars from, you know, our children and our children's children.
It was like using the stroke of a pen to destroy the U.S.'s balance sheet. They gave you windmills, so you should be happy. But we got it. We got it back.
But President Trump unbanned the ban. We're back in action and we're back. We're going to be this country is going to be an energy powerhouse. And that's great for America and and great for the public. And by the way, public should understand when when we issue a permit for timber, for grazing, for critical minerals, for coal, for oil and gas, those companies pay the Treasury. And then when they develop those minerals, they pay us a royalty. We are a revenue generator that can help reduce the budget and help balance the budget, reduce the deficit, balance the budget.
We are we are a powerhouse. So when we're doing this thing smarter, safer, cleaner, healthier than anywhere else in the world here, when we're developing those energy resources here, we're also helping every American financially, not just on the bill for the electricity they pay at home or the heat for their home. We're also helping pay down the cost because of the debt and the interest rates, the biggest expense. So we're helping everybody when we smartly use these resources. It's good because the big, beautiful bill is going to need to pay for us. So we'll see how that goes. Mr. Secretary, Doug Burgum, thanks so much. Brian, always great to be with you. Good to get you in motion. I'll see you in the Statue of Liberty soon, I hope. OK, looking forward to that.
