And now a look at former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who's been nominated to head the Interior Department for the incoming Trump administration.
Mr. Burgum sought the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but ended up suspending his campaign six months after announcing his candidacy.
He eventually went on to endorse Donald Trump for president.
Prior to his political career, Mr. Burgum was an early shareholder of Great Plains Software and eventually became president of the accounting software company.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, Governor, thanks so much for joining.
You ran a great campaign for president and infused the campaign with amazing ideas on energy, on economic development.
The fact that you're a businessman is something that is greatly lacking in this administration.
Tell us your assessment of things and what you...
I'm sure you'll be working over the next four months to get Donald Trump elected, but how do you see the world right now?
Thank you so much for being here.
Well, thank you, Steven.
And good morning, everybody.
I want to just start with gratitude, you know, Committee to Leash.
The prosperity, the amazing work that all of you are doing.
And then everybody here this today, I mean, the work that happens because of your support, your participation.
All of you are here because you care about our country.
You're here because you care about your communities.
You care about your kids and your grandkids.
And you know that their future depends on how we do as a country.
Our strength has always been rooted in our economic strength.
And so the ideas that are being discussed and the work that's being done by this committee is so important.
So I just want to say thanks to all of you for being here.
Thanks for all of you being in the arena.
And what an amazing panel.
I'm honored to be included with these icons of American history that are up here.
You ever met this guy?
I have.
And I met him, studied both of you, so that's great to be here.
But we have...
An incredible opportunity.
We're at a cusp right now of unleashing a new wave of economic activity driven by artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence has got an opportunity to transform every job, every industry, and every company.
And it's going to do that, and it's going to hit us sooner and faster.
The next wave that's coming this year is going to be an order of magnitude better and stronger than what's here right now.
But we have a lead.
I mean, we're in an AI arms...
We're good to go.
I think?
Because of people like Harold, we've got energy security in our country.
China imports 11 million barrels of oil a day.
We've got the best farmers and ranchers in the world.
We produce so much food.
We've got food security, which we never ever talk about.
We just take it for granted because that's something we have.
China has to import food to feed those people every day.
But the one thing that they're doing that we're not, under Joe Biden with his energy policies, he's shutting down base load energy in our country right now.
The rules and regulations that they've tried to do to shut down our base load and think that we can just live on intermittent, that would be solar and wind, that only works when the sun shines and the wind blows.
We need base load to be able to have manufacturing.
We need base load electricity that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no matter what.
And of course, nuclear is part of that solution in the future, but it's not here yet.
But what we have right now is China is building, they've got commissioned over, they're the world's largest polluter right now.
We're good to go.
With this policy of sort of economic martyrdom around a falsehood around some climate goals.
And then we have the thing which is AI.
AI takes electricity.
The whole time I was in technology, We consumed about 1 % of the nation's electricity for 30 years, even though everybody got a cell phone, everybody had a personal computer, the efficiency was there, and we were about 1%.
That could grow to 6 % to 10 % of the total demand for electricity in this country could go to data centers to drive AI.
And AI, like I said, we're in an arms race.
Here we're using it to try to make a job more efficient.
China's using it to impact their military.
The world order is going to be determined by who leads in AI.
That can't happen unless we have energy here.
And then we also, again, this thing which Harold is, you know, in our state, this guy's an incredible hero.
And what Harold did with horizontal drilling, think of that as innovation.
They don't think of oil guys as tech guys.
What Harold did was a miracle.
The Bakken, which is one of the largest oil fields in the world, is in many cases a 30 -foot strip of hard rock.
Thank you very much.
And you want to talk about a tax cut.
What Harold did, that's like a trillion dollars, literally a trillion dollars of saving to all of you and everybody that works for you because every consumer in America paid less for their food, their clothes, their gas in their car,
the heat in their home because of what Harold Hamm did in American innovation.
And that innovation can accelerate if we have AI.
If we lose the AI arms race, it's over with China.
I know you've got a crazy day today.
Well, I think we're in an incredible position versus where we were three weeks ago,
and there's just been win after win after win, and in the middle of that, something that was horrifyingly millimeter away from chaos and mourning.
Donald Trump won that debate.
That wasn't like winning a debate.
That was a knockout.
I mean, that was like a Rocky -style knockout.
And he didn't just knock out a candidate that got exposed that has been a giant conspiracy hiding President Biden's condition, that everybody's been complicit on it, including Vice President Harris, everybody around the White House, the media.
I mean, that was, I think...
All of you weren't surprised.
If all you watched was MSNBC and then you saw that, you're like shocked because you've been told that, hey, this guy's a rocket science behind closed doors.
And then you're seeing what you...
You can't unsee what you saw with your eyes that night, no matter how much positioning and spinning they do.
But so the whole...
We're good to go.
I think?
That's a big win.
Yes?
And then you have these other court cases that have been win, for the president.
And then, of course, a millimeter away from a complete change in history on Saturday night.
And then that, I think, created an image which is real.
President Trump's first response when he got up was the courage, the resilience, the spirit, the fight, and that picture which will now be in children's school books a hundred years from now of him with his fist up with a flag flying over his head.
That contrast versus Joe Biden?
I mean, again, if you're an independent or you're a Democrat, you look at that and you say, wow, we have two very different things going on.
And in a world where we're in a proxy war with Iran, we're in a proxy war with Russia.
We're in a cold war with China.
President Trump is actually a deterrent himself.
I mean, people look at President Trump and they're like, if we do something, he'll do something back.
I mean, he's a deterrent.
He's like a national security.
Joe Biden, they look at him and go, hey, you know, we can do whatever we want and he's not going to do anything.
I mean, we're empowering a terrorist group, we're empowering countries, we empower Putin, and then back, you'll...