North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) is happy to pay it forward. Burgum made waves a year ago when he announced his extremely unlikely bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. (He’s rich, which always helps.) He fared poorly, but that’s probably been more of a positive than a negative: He never had to take a big swipe at Trump, but he still got Trump’s attention. Now he’s being discussed as a contender for his party’s vice presidential nomination.
That brought him to NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, where — with a touch of his political E-ZPass — he offered a clear articulation of the Republican response to concerns that Trump is seeking authoritarian power: No, Democrats are.
Host Kristen Welker asked whether Trump’s comments during last week’s presidential debate had the effect of “undermining people’s faith in … democracy itself, raising questions about the fairness of the 2020 election.” They hadn’t, Burgum replied, because “both parties have done that.” Her evidence that Democrats had done that was familiar and tenuous: calling for a recount in 2000 or complaining about the outcome in 2016.
“As a country, if we want to move forward,” Burgum said, “we have to have elections that both parties agree on.”
On paper, this seems uncontroversial. In context, however, it is anything but. The point of Trump’s efforts to subvert 2020 was that he set up and emboldened Republicans to reject the results of the election. A deal that both parties agreed to, then, necessarily meant one in which the reality of Trump’s defeat was somehow undermined. Setting this standard going forward means that partisanship must define the limits of acceptability, not mathematics. This is precisely the sort of thing that is alarming to those concerned about Trump’s approach to democracy.
Welker reacted, as expected: Wasn’t Trump’s inability to admit defeat alarming?
Burgum didn’t think so, given that, “Trump, at the end of this term on January 20th, left the White House. We had a smooth transition.”
Welker offered January 6 as a counterpoint to this argument.
“Well, I guess we’d have to say it was a smooth transition,” Burgum replied, which we certainly can’t. A second later, he arrived at the pivotal point.
“As we go into 2024, I think both parties will be very focused on [the election]“, he said. “I think the threat to democracy, as governor in North Dakota today, I have been living under what I call the Biden dictatorship because of all the rules and regulations.”
Welker noted that Biden had introduced fewer executive orders than Trump and Burgum himself, asking if that made Burgum “the dictator of North Dakota.” Burgum claimed he was simply “trying to get rid of the bureaucracy” and changed the subject.
Again, though, this is the rhetoric: Democrats are the real threat to democracy. It’s not always articulated in the way Burgum used it, but it’s routine. The violence that followed some protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020 was worse than the Capitol riot. The arrests of those who participated in the riot were not a response to an effort to subvert democracy, but a subversion itself. It’s not what Trump does that’s the problem; it’s Biden and the Democrats and being “woke” and labeling social media posts as false and changing the rules around elections and so on. The problem isn’t us, and it’s not Donald Trump. The problem is them, and it’s the dictator Biden.
That Democrats and Republicans see the threat to democracy as a significant problem has been established in polls for some time. Last month, a Fox News poll found that members of both major parties saw the threat to democracy as a function of restricted freedoms rather than, for example, tainted elections.
Over the weekend, a CBS News poll conducted by YouGov showed just how widespread the sentiment is. A majority of Democrats said democracy would be safe only if Biden won in November. A majority of Republicans said it would be safe only if Trump won.
The net effect is that Americans overall are divided. A majority thinks democracy will not be protected if Biden wins, and a (mostly different) majority thinks it will not be protected if Trump wins.
As Welker pointed out to Burgum, the portrayal of Biden as a “dictator” because he took executive action is completely ridiculous. It became even more ridiculous after the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election had broad protections against 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 a potential running mate. It’s also clear that many Republicans believe this, who see Biden as dictatorial at heart because he uses the power granted to him by the 2020 election to enact his agenda.
If you think the election was illegitimate because Trump convinced you of it, it’s not hard to see how Biden’s perception plays out.
