Port: Doug Burgum now campaigning to be Trump's secretary of state

MINOT — “He doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as just an agriculture and energy guy, I’m told, though that’s a natural reflection of where he’s been doing his governing,” I wrote in a column over the weekend, referring to Gov. Doug Burgum’s ongoing campaign to be a part of the Donald Trump administration.

Now that his presidential and vice presidential campaigns are over, having ended unsuccessfully, it’s been widely expected that Burgum will get a cabinet posting. And the most talked about positions, given that he’s the governor of North Dakota, where agriculture and energy are the dominant economic drivers, are Secretary of Agriculture or Secretary of Energy.

But that’s not where Burgum is pointing himself. “Burgum has his eyes set higher, perhaps on one of the top-tier seats,” I wrote. “Secretary of state? Secretary of the Treasury?”

According to a report from Axios today,

“Former President Trump’s two veep runners-up, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, are in the running for secretary of state.”

The other names mentioned in the article for that post are Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, though the latter is said to prefer Secretary of Defense.

The State Department does make some sense for Burgum. It does jibe with the themes of his own presidential campaign, which were all about using America’s prodigious economic might — of which energy and agriculture are a not insubstantial part — as a lever in world diplomacy. After all, that’s the game China and Russia are playing.

Of course, for Burgum or any other Republican to get an appointment, Trump has to actually win the election, and that’s looking like a far less certain thing than it did a couple of weeks ago. The polls have shown that Vice President Kamala Harris has closed the deficit incumbent President Joe Biden had against Trump in the polls and some of the latest polling has her

opening a small lead.

This talk of which Republican will get which post in a second Trump administration smacks of some premature drape-measuring.

Still, it wouldn’t be surprising that Trump would be deeply concerned about who staffs his cabinet. Moreso, even, than the typical presidential candidate, given that dozens of people who served in his previous administration, including those who filled top-level positions like secretary of defense and secretary of state, now oppose his reelection.

“Trump constantly tells friends he felt burned by disloyal Cabinet officials and staff last time around,”

Axios reports.

“This time, he wants people he can trust both to implement his policies and never block his will.”

Trump doesn’t want a “team of rivals,” in other words. He wants sycophants and yes-men.

And Burgum,

with all the bowing and scraping he’s done since ending his own presidential campaign,

has positioned himself perfectly for the gig.