On the list of most populous states, North Dakota comes in at 47. Even its neighbor to the south, governed by puppy-slaying Kristi Noem, has a greater population of people—and voters.
But despite North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s obscurity and the fact that he held no political office before becoming governor of this lightly populated state in 2016, he is reportedly at the top of Trump's list of vice presidential hopefuls.
Burgum has been touching all the bases on the Wanna-Be-VP Tour, including making an appearance at Trump's New York trial for falsifying documents connected to the 2016 election. Though Burgum doesn’t have a lot of accomplishments, his political experience seems wholly inadequate, and his familiarity to voters around the nation is somewhere well below that of Cricket, he has something that appeals to Trump: money.
According to Forbes, Burgum is worth at least $100 million. That doesn’t put him in the billionaire’s club, but it’s more than enough to allow him to personally plow over $10 million into his short-lived vanity run for president.
That level of wealth is certainly enough to impress Trump, who mentioned Burgum’s affluence during his recent nutty New Jersey rally. Similarly, during a private donor event earlier this month, Trump praised Burgum as “a very rich man” who was “very impressive.”
But Trump might be even more impressed that Burgum has been acting as his chief surrogate for the ultra wealthy. During a Fox News appearance, host Laura Ingraham asked Burgum for his “message to billionaires across this country.”
“I know you know a lot of these folks,” she said.
Burgum replied by complaining about the difficulties that Democrats and the liberal media are imposing on Trump, then reassured his billionaire buddies that Trump’s “policies are all in the right direction.”
“If you’re a billionaire and you care about your shareholders, you care about your family, you care about your grandkids, you should be voting for someone that’s going to bring prosperity to America and peace to the world,” he said.
Burgum didn’t bother to appeal to billionaires who care about the nation or people outside of their families. Not his kind of people. He also seemed to ignore that the stock market under Biden has outperformed its growth under Trump and that Trump’s predictions about the market have been incredibly wrong.
While media shorthand describes Burgum as a “tech millionaire,” that’s not quite the case. Burgum got rich from selling Great Plains Software, a manufacturer of small business accounting tools, to Microsoft just months before the economy dived following the burst of the end-of-millennium dot-com bubble. Burgum left the deal with a stack of Microsoft stock and a position as a senior vice president at the tech giant.
However, Burgum wasn’t the founder of Great Plains, and he certainly didn’t write the software. Rather, he was part of a group of investors who bought into the company and replaced the existing president with Burgum. His job was primarily to shepherd the company to an initial public offering and eventual sale.
In the end, Trump’s favorite thing about Burgum might not be his money. It could be his utter lack of charisma and memorability.
As The New York Times reported, the No. 1 rule for Trump’s vice president pick is to never hog the spotlight. Burgum is a guy who will never threaten to replace Trump or challenge him for the hearts of the MAGA faithful. His utter blandness just might be his selling point.
Doug Burgum is like Mike Pence 2.0: unthreatening and uninspiring, only this time with $100 million and 100% less concern about upholding the Constitution.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
