Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum pulled back the curtain on the first cabinet meeting of the new Trump administration in a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
Burgum, the former tech CEO and governor of North Dakota, told Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley that he felt the excitement in the room on Wednesday, praising Trump for hiring a “great team” and giving agency heads a “clear direction” to fulfill the administration’s promises to the American people.
“I look around that room and a number of those folks are friends of mine, people that I’ve known, people that have had great success in the private sector, people that are making big sacrifices to come and do public service working for the government to try to solve these problems that people think are intractable, like our $2 trillion deficit. He’s empowering everybody,” Burgum said.
“I felt the energy in the room was electric. People were excited to be there, to be in the cabinet room, to be part of this historic team,” he added. “And I think the amount of talent in the room is really, really high. And I’m very excited about what everybody’s going to get done and get done working together for the American people.”
The secretary was also asked about the cabinet’s reaction to Trump’s senior adviser, Elon Musk, as critics continue to express concern over Musk’s influence on the administration. During the cabinet meeting, Trump asked if any agency leaders were “unhappy with Elon,” a question to which the cabinet members responded with laughter and then applause for Musk.
Burgum told Morning Wire that he can’t speak for everyone in the room, but he’s excited about what Musk brings to the table as a tech executive.
“Being a tech CEO is different than other categories,” Burgum said. “In tech, there are no natural barriers. No one has a monopoly … you have to be better, faster, cheaper for your customers tomorrow than you were yesterday, or you go out of business. So competition drives innovation.”
He added that the actions taken by Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project to shake up the bureaucracy will bring a “major right-sizing of the federal government” that’s “long overdue.”
Discussing his specific priorities, Burgum said that he is focused on accomplishing the president’s goal of ramping up energy production.
“We have a chance to literally change the whole world when we change U.S. energy policy,” he said. “And that’s going to take the whole of government.”
The Department of Interior manages more than 500 million acres of public land as well as the Outer Continental Shelf, which holds roughly 68.79 billion barrels of oil and 229.03 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to federal government estimates. Burgum said his department will also play a critical role in the Trump administration’s desire to once again tap into America’s mining and timber industries.
“Now, we’re completely dependent on our adversaries for the critical and rare earth minerals we need for technology and for defense,” he stated, adding that the United States has “a couple billion acres of offshore [resources] … that we can develop safely and securely and, and be great for our environment. So this is the balance sheet of America.”