North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (R) is happy to give money. Burgum attracted attention a year ago when he announced a highly unlikely run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination (he’s rich, so that always helps). It didn’t go well, but that’s probably more of a positive than a negative. He didn’t need to attack Trump so harshly, but it still got him attention. Now he’s in discussion as a possible vice presidential candidate for the party.
That prompted him to appear on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday, where, ringing his political password, E-ZPass, he deftly phrased the Republican response to concerns that Trump is seeking dictatorial power: “No, the Democrats are.”
Moderator Kristen Welker asked whether Trump’s comments during last week’s presidential debate had the effect of “undermining people’s faith in our democracy itself by casting doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election.” Burgum replied that they hadn’t, because “both parties have done this.” Burgum’s evidence that Democrats had done so was familiar and flimsy: they called for recounts in 2000 or complained about the results in 2016.
“If we want to move forward as a country, we need to have elections that both parties can agree on,” Burgum said.
On paper, this seems uncontroversial. But in context, it is anything but. The purpose of Trump’s efforts to overturn 2020 was to induce and encourage Republicans to reject the election results. Thus, any compromise the two parties agreed to necessarily meant diluting in some way the reality of Trump’s defeat. Setting that standard going forward means that the boundaries of tolerance should be set by partisanship, not mathematics. That’s exactly the kind of thing that unsettles those concerned about Trump’s approach to democracy.
Welker fired back as you’d expect: “Wasn’t it disturbing that Trump refused to concede?”
Burgum doesn’t think so: “Trump left the White House at the end of his term on January 20th. There was a smooth transition.”
Welker cited Jan. 6 as a rebuttal to that argument.
“Well, I guess you’d have to say it was a smooth transition,” Burgum replied. But we don’t think so. A second later, he got to the crux of the matter.
“I think going into 2024, both parties are going to be very focused. [the election]”I see it as a threat to democracy. Now, as the governor of North Dakota, I’ve lived under what’s called a Biden dictatorship because of all the rules and regulations.”
Welker noted that Biden has issued fewer executive orders than either President Trump or Burgum himself and asked if Burgum would become a “dictator of North Dakota.” Burgum changed the subject, claiming he was simply “trying to cut through the red tape.”
But this is rhetoric. The Democratic Party Genuine Threats to democracy. They are never phrased in the terms Burgum used, but they are commonplace. The violence that followed protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020 was worse than the Capitol riots. The arrests of those who participated in the riots were not a response to an attempt to subvert democracy, but an act of subversion in itself. The problem is not Trump’s actions, but Biden and the Democrats “woke up” and labeling social media posts as fake and changing the rules about elections. The problem is not us, or Donald Trump. The problem is them, Biden the dictator.
Polls have long shown that Democrats and Republicans cite threats to democracy as a major issue: A Fox News poll last month found that lawmakers from both major parties see threats to democracy not from things like election interference, but from restrictions on freedoms.
A YouGov CBS News poll over the weekend showed just how widespread this sentiment is: A majority of Democrats said democracy would only be safe if Biden wins in November, while a majority of Republicans said democracy would only be safe if Trump wins.
The end result is that Americans as a whole are divided: Majorities believe that a Biden win would not protect our democracy, and majorities (although majorities differ) believe that a Trump win would not protect our democracy.
As Welker pointed out to Burgum, labeling Biden a “dictator” because he has implemented executive orders is simply absurd — made even more absurd by the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday that Trump’s attempts to interfere with the 2020 election are broadly protected from criminal prosecution. It’s not even clear to what extent Burgum believes that.
But it’s clear that this is the kind of thing Trump wants to hear from his running mate, and that many Republicans believe it, and view Biden as autocratic because he is using the power given to him by the 2020 election to implement his own agenda.
If Trump believes the election was rigged because he led people to believe it was fraudulent, it’s easy to see how this perception could continue for Biden.
