North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has said he would vote for Donald Trump again for president, but refuses to do business with the man he is now running against for the Republican presidential nomination.
Burgum, a former business owner who turned a small software company into a $1.1 billion deal with Microsoft, was asked by “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd in an interview that aired Sunday if he would business with Trump.
“I don’t think so,” Burgum replied. When asked why, he said: “I think it’s important that you’re judged by the company that you keep.”
One person Burgum said he would feel comfortable doing business with is Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter and Tesla.
Asked what the difference between Musk and Trump was, Burgum said: “Just look at the business history is what I would say, and that’s what I would take a look at before making a decision on who to partner with.”
But Burgum, who declared his candidacy in June, said Trump would still have his vote if next year’s election is a rematch of 2020.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday, Burgum said that if he had to choose between voting for Trump or voting for Biden, he would vote for Trump in a heartbeat.
“I voted for him twice, and if he runs against Biden, I will definitely vote for him again,” Burgum said, calling it a “no-brainer.”
Burgum, however, has expressed less certainty when it comes to the possibility of pardoning Trump, who currently has two criminal cases pending against him.
“You’re asking me a hypothetical question about something two years from now, when we don’t even know if this will go ahead or if there will be a conviction,” Burgum told Hugh Hewitt in an interview last year. month.
Burgum has focused his campaign more on policy issues than the culture war issues favored by other candidates, such as Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He told “Meet the Press” that he would still be his focus if he is elected president.
“There’s a broad spectrum of Americans who are really frustrated with the discourse that’s happening on the edge. And part of the reason they’re frustrated is because there are no candidates, there are no options on the ballot, to talk about the things that they care,” Burgum said.
“We know that the issues that matter most, to the most Americans ultimately, when people end up voting, they vote on pocket issues. And you can’t say to voters, ‘Hey, look, you should feel better.’ about the inflation we have this year because it’s half of last year,’” she said.
Burgum said he would not sign any federal legislation on abortion rights, arguing that it “should be left up to the states” and that he felt the same way about other culture war issues.
“Guess who loves more when we talk about, you know, culture war issues in the US. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran. They all have people coming to work every day to conduct cyber attacks on America,” he said. .
