President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he plans to select North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as his nominee to be the secretary of the Department of the Interior.
"We have a big announcement, and I won’t tell you, it’s — I won’t tell you the name of his, the exact name," Trump teased during his remarks at Mar-a-Lago for an America First Policy Institute event. "I think he’s an incredible person, got an unbelievably wonderful wife named Kathryn. So, I won’t tell you — his name might be something like 'Burgum.' Burgum."
"He’s from North Dakota. He’s going to be announced tomorrow for a very big position," Trump added before pointing to and waving at Burgum.
Moments later, he announced that Burgum is "going to head the Department of Interior, and he's going to be fantastic."
When reached for comment, Burgum spokesperson Rob Lockwood said that the governor's team is waiting to comment until tomorrow, when Trump said he will make the formal announcement.
Shortly before Trump’s remarks, NBC News asked Burgum whether there have been conversations about being nominated for interior secretary.
“There’ve been a lot of discussions about a lot of different things,” Burgum told reporters.
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“Nothing’s true ’til you read it on Truth Social,” he added.
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Burgum had become a familiar presence on the campaign trail stumping for Trump, and the president-elect had previously considered selecting him as his running mate before settling on now-vice president-elect JD Vance of Ohio.
The North Dakota governor has a business background and sold a software company to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion in stock. Burgum then worked at Microsoft as a senior vice president through 2007 and continued in other business ventures in real estate and venture capital.
He was first elected governor in 2016 and won re-election in 2020.
He ran a long-shot presidential campaign and dropped out of the race in December 2023 after not qualifying for the most recent debates.
Katherine Koretski contributed.
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