North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum From Israel On The Exploding Pagers And On Trump And Domestic Energy Agenda

The Hugh Hewitt Show

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum joined me this morning from Israel on the morning after Hezbollah’s pagers exploded:

Audio:

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Transcript:

HH: Whether or not you are watching on the Salem News Channel or listening to any of my radio outlets across the country, stay tuned, because the big story is in Israel, where yesterday, the Mossad, or somebody exploded 3,000 pagers in Hezbollah headquarters and throughout the country. And in Israel, we are lucky to have North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who is visiting the Jewish state. He joins me by phone from Israel. Good morning, Governor Burgum. Thank you for being with me. What are you doing in Israel?

DB: Well, good morning, Hugh. Well, here on a quick three-day solidarity mission to show those in Israel that many of us in the United States are literally standing with them, and not just figuratively, but literally stand with Israel in Israel as we approach the October 7th anniversary. And of course, I feel in the context of elections back home, protests on college campuses, there’s just so much misinformation and misunderstanding about what’s going on in this country. And having this morning just toured a kibbutz where one of the atrocities was rained upon just a mile and a quarter from the Gaza border, and then also just left the Nova concert site where just unthinkable…I mean, I just, it’s heartbreaking when you look at the pictures and the photos of 300, memorials for 370 young people. To think that we’ve got young people on campuses protesting the murder and slaughter of the kind of thing they probably would think they might be doing this weekend. So we told…

HH: There are, nights ago, Governor, you’ve been traveling, a Jewish student at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, where I went to law school, was beaten for being a Jewish student. So it’s begun again. It’s extraordinary to me. I hope it doesn’t go on at North Dakota State.

DB: No, not happening in North Dakota, for sure. And, but I tell you, and you mentioned at the top of the hour, I think Americans are forgetting. They’re focusing on Gaza. They’re, you know, they have a few soundbites, but this is a country that since October 7th last year has had close to 8,000 missiles launched at this country in the last year. And since, you know, this thing that went by in April, April 14th, where Iran itself directly attacked Israel with hundreds and hundreds of missiles. And again, the United States, in partnership with others in the region, knocking down most of those, and then the current administration saying well, call it a win, I mean, as opposed to saying no, we just got attacked not by one of the tentacles, but by the head of the whole octopus, which is Iran who is funding all of this. And then, of course, talk to anybody in the U.S. Navy, and we’ve got restrictions and interruptions to our global supply chain in the Red Sea because of what the Houthis are doing. And we landed here on Monday, and the day before, they were blowing sirens at the Tel Aviv airport, because a ballistic missile had come from Yemen. I mean, we’re talking a thousand kilometers away aimed at the Tel Aviv airport. So this is a, there is not just a conflict going on here. I guess people get semantic, don’t want to call it war. But if you were living in the U.S. or Canada and somebody had rained down close to 8,000 rockets on you in the last year, I mean, since August, that’s about one an hour if you spread it out, the 4,600 that have come since the April attack. You know, we’d probably say we’re at war. I mean, I don’t know how you would think about that. I would, I would say like hey, we’re in a conflict right now, and I think Americans and perhaps the Biden-Harris administration don’t even fully understand that, because they keep talking about restricting sending weapons to Israel at a time when they need our full and unequivocal support. I mean, this is, if you would see the atrocities of what Hamas inflicted here, there would be a clearer side of right and wrong, and who’s on the right side from any moral authority in terms of this conflict.

HH: Now Governor Burgum, next hour, I’m going to play a tape we’ve laid down of you and I talking about American energy. And we’re going to talk about Israel in that context in their desalinization and their energy production, and how Iran is being funded by us. But I want to focus in this first segment of the show on what happened yesterday. What do the Israelis tell you about what happened yesterday, because it’s on the front page of every newspaper in the United States. It’s leading every broadcast, because it’s so remarkable that Israel can carry off, as is suspected, Mossad, an attack on 3,000 senior Hezbollah leaders in order to disable is, probably in anticipation of an invasion of Hezbollah-held Lebanon. What do you hear on the ground after one day about that remarkable operation?

DB: Well, we had an opportunity to have some conversations with senior government officials last night, more coming tonight. This is certainly a topic here as well, and everyone’s quite mum the word about who and exactly how from a confidentiality. But I think Hugh, you would understand this better than anyone, but to have that kind of precision, to be able to take out thousands of people precisely, because you’re only wearing a Hezbollah pager if you’re part of the Hezbollah command structure. And remarkable, of course, it’s been reported that the Iranian ambassador, I put that in air quotes, was wearing a Hezbollah pager, because it certainly seems to me that if you’re, you know, maybe you’re not a diplomat if you’re actually wearing a terrorist group’s pager and part of their command structure. So that, that’s again a remarkable, remarkable thing. But I mean, this is the stuff that will go down in history. I mean, in all of this, this could be the most successful counterterrorism attack every in terms of its precision of hitting the people you want to hit, and having the least amount of collateral damage. I mean, it’s just remarkable, and I, again, when you think about all the rockets that have been fired from the north into Israel, and the 100,000 people that have been displaced in Israel because of that with the battles going on with Hezbollah from the north, which you know barely makes the paper at home because everyone’s focused on Gaza and Hamas, but this is just a remarkable thing. And I think it’s a sea change. And what a shock for these terrorist groups to understand that there’s that level of precision, infiltration and capability that exists on the other side of them.

HH: Now Governor Burgum, we have two very different candidates. You’re close with President Trump, full-throated support for Israel, telling them to win the war. He’ll support this operation. Vice President Harris says oh, Israel has the right to defend itself, but it can’t do what it’s done in Gaza. We haven’t hear anything, yet, about the pagers. She’ll probably condemn that or not speak to it. Do you have a good sense of the difference the Israelis feel between Trump and Harris today? Have you picked that up at all?

DB: Well, certainly there’s an understanding. But if you’re a senior leader in Israel, as they say, you’ve got very few friends in the world right now. The United States is a friend, and you’ve got to be a friend, whether it’s your best friend or the, which would be President Trump’s administration, or your second-best friend, which would be the U.S. with somebody else. But clearly, they understand that there’s two different futures for them after next January 20th, and after this election, because as you said, I mean, it’s, you know, Harris doesn’t even put a comma in the sentence. I support Israel but I don’t think that they should receive 2,000-pound bombs. I mean, she’s putting conditions on the relationship all the time. When she tells, hey, when she says ceasefire, all that Hamas and Iran hear is oh, now there’s pressure on Israel to surrender. And so I’ve said this on your show. Maybe I’ve said it on others a year ago. But I feel like they keep negotiating for the terrorists on behalf of the terrorists. Unless you’re putting maximum pressure on Iran and full support for Israel, if you’re doing the opposite and you’re putting conditions on Israel, and trying to create space for Hamas to exist, then you’re negotiating, that’s the position they want. You’re negotiating for the terrorists as opposed to for our allies.

HH: True. Now Governor, to close off our first segment, you’re a good friend with President Trump. I only interview him or moderate debates with him. I’ve only had one private meeting with him in my entire life. But you know him very well. How did the second assassination attempt impact you, because it just seems to me the man is a target because the left has fired hate. We have one minute to our break.

DB: Well, I think again, if you, you know, Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris are running on a couple of themes, and one of those themes was that President Trump is a threat to democracy. If you say that a thousand times, put it in ads, you know, repeat it over and over again, then you know, you’re going to have followers that believe they’re going to be heroes if they can take him out. And I think that there’s political violence, and then there’s violence in language. And I think those kinds of words, which against someone who is supporting the rights of states and supports democracy, unthinkable.

HH: I’m going to come back with Governor Burgum in the next hour with a piece on energy that I taped, again, this morning with him at like 5:00 in the morning. So don’t miss the next hour, Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, in Israel. Thank you, Governor.

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