President Donald Trump bizarrely claimed that he chose Doug Burgum to serve as his secretary of the Interior after he saw the ex-governor wife, Kathryn, riding a horse.
The president made the comments on Thursday evening in the Oval Office during a meeting of senior officials.
“I saw them riding horses in a video,” Trump said. “And I said, 'Who is that?' I was talking about her, not him.
“I said, 'I'm gonna hire him,' because anybody that has somebody like you to be with, it's an amazing tribute.”
Trump announced at the Oval Office event that Kathryn Burgum would lead the White House Great American Recovery Initiative alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Like Kennedy, who has talked about his recovery from heroin addiction, Kathryn Burgum has opened up about her past substance abuse, specifically, her difficulties with alcoholism.
When Doug Burgum served as governor of North Dakota, Kathryn Burgum launched the Recovery Reinvented initiative as first lady of the state.
Burgum made a long-shot run for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, but dropped out after failing to build any support. He endorsed Trump shortly thereafter.
The governor was also in the running to become Trump’s running mate before Trump ultimately picked JD Vance to be his vice president in his second White House term.
After Trump won, he nominated Burgum, who was term-limited as governor and could not run again, to serve as secretary of Interior.
Burgum faced a relatively uncontroversial confirmation vote, receiving 80 votes for the job, with only 17 Democrats voting against his nomination.
But not all Trump administration officials have been exempt from the commander-in-chief’s scrutiny. During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, the president did not acknowledge Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has been on the hotseat over the actions of immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota that resulted in the deaths of two civilians.
Meanwhile, the president has made a series of nonsensical and non-sequitur comments in recent weeks.
During a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he called Greenland “Iceland” on multiple occasions.
And voters are increasingly questioning Trump’s mental fitness to do the job, as they did his predecessor, Joe Biden.
A YouGov/The Economist poll from this week showed that 34 percent of Americans thought that the president suffered a signficant cognitive decline and 15 percent said they thought he suffered a modest cognitive decline.
But many Republicans have defended him from accusations of decline.
“Is this a serious question? This president sleeps about three hours a night,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told The Independent earlier this month.
“He outworks everybody in this building by a factor of two or three. He's gotten more done in the first year of his presidency than anybody in history. I cannot even believe you asked me that question.”
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