Exclusive — Doug Burgum Addresses VP Speculation: ‘Got to’ Elect Trump

Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday he was flattered that former President Donald Trump said he would like him to serve in his administration if elected back to the White House, but emphasized his focus is on governing North Dakota and getting the 45th president elected.

Burgum joined host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle for a 20-minute segment on the program days after Trump’s historic victory in the Iowa Caucuses. In his victory speech, Trump said he would like to have the governor as a “very important” part of a potential second administration. Breitbart News subsequently reported some in Trump’s orbit have even discussed him as a potential running mate or cabinet secretary.

Boyle asked Burgum, who ran in the GOP primary before leaving the race in December and endorsing Trump on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses, if he would want to be Trump’s running mate – if the 45th president asked – or if he would serve in another capacity in the event Trump wins the nomination and general election and calls upon him.

“Well, it’s very flattering, the nice things that President Trump has said in the past and said that night, but you know, these are all hypotheticals, and right now I got the greatest job in the world, which is Governor of North Dakota, and I’m very focused on my day job here,” Burgum said. “And we’ve got to get President Trump… the nomination; we got to get him elected. There’s a long way to go before any of those scenarios were to come true.”

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The governor, who hails from the tech business world, emphasized that when he entered the race, he was not doing so to audition for a cabinet position.

“But when I was running this fall, I was consistent, and I said, ‘Hey, I’m not running for a cabinet position. I’m not running for any other reason from that standpoint. I’m running because I also care about the country and particularly the issues of economy, energy, and national security, which affect every American,” Burgum emphasized.

“These are things that in North Dakota – we’re a huge energy state – we see all the time, and I see the crushing amount of regulatory regime, the unelected bureaucrats in the Biden administration that are trying to crush American energy and agriculture, hurting small businesses, I see that,” he added. “And that’s the fight that I’m in, and I’m gonna keep fighting that fight here in North Dakota and supporting President Trump to get the nomination, win the election anyway we can. That’s what my focus is on.”

Boyle also asked Burgum to talk about his relationship with the former president and their time together flying on “Trump Force I” early Tuesday morning from Iowa to New York after Trump’s thunderous victory.

“Well, we first met back in 2015 when he was campaigning in North Dakota, and we’ve had a strong relationship since then,” Burgum noted. “We’ve aligned on a lot of policies. And I’ll tell you, having been a governor under President Trump and being a governor under Joe Biden, those two things… couldn’t be more different. Night and day between what it’s like: One is wind at your back, the other is constant wind in your face, and so the relationship has been very strong.”

Burgum highlighted that North Dakota First Lady Kathryn Burgum attended numerous events at the Trump White House when it was working to battle the opioid crisis.

“The first lady, Kathryn, First Lady of North Dakota, she’s courageously shared her story all over the country about her battle with addiction and now her recovery for the past 21 years, and she serves on the board of Hazelton Betty Ford now, coming a long way from her decades-long struggle with addiction,” Burgum said. “But as you know, under President Trump, there was a lot of attention about trying to stop this opioid crisis. The first lady herself was at more than half a dozen events at the White House when… the Trump administration was actually trying to do something. Now, under the open borders policy of the Biden administration, we’ve lost six Vietnams worth of people in our country to overdose deaths, and in just three years, we’ve had more people enter the country illegally than the population of all six New England states combined. It’s completely uneconomic on any level, and it makes our nation less safe. And so I think that that’s another issue where the first lady and the President both connect, because every family’s been affected in this country by the disease of addiction.”

During Tuesday’s early morning flight to New York, where Trump had legal proceedings later that day, Burgum said the 45th president worked the entire time, as did his team.

“Nobody works harder than Donald Trump. That plane left Iowa at midnight, a two-and-a-half-hour flight with the time change landing at 3:30 in the morning, and President Trump never stopped working for one minute on that flight,” Burgum recalled. “It was impressive, then he had to get up the next day and have a full day of activity before going to New Hampshire the next night.”

“Everybody on that plane, assuredly there must have been 35-40 people on the plane, everybody nose-down working, keeping up with a boss, who is the hardest-working one of them all, and it’s just impressive, because I know when he was president, he brought that work ethic every day,” he added.

Burgum admitted that toward the end of the flight, there was some indulgence in entertainment, Trump’s Spotify playlist in particular. Burgum said Trump has “great taste in music.”