Big News Coming for Montana Mining, What We Heard at White House

Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told us at the White House that he is headed to Montana later this week, and he's gonna have some good news to deliver when he shows up with Congressman Ryan Zinke (MT-01) in the Western Congressional District.

We got to chat with Secretary and former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Secretary Burgum: "We got a trip that's in the works for this Friday, and going to be happy to be there with Congressman Ryan Zinke, former Secretary of Interior, and a friend, a friend and neighbor, North Dakota, Montana neighbor. So I'm looking forward to getting a chance to be in state with him on Friday.

Aaron Flint: "Can you give us a preview or what the topic might be? Because I understand it could be some very good news for some folks in Montana."

Secretary Burgum: "Well, I won't jump ahead of any news. But of course, one of the things that our country used to be great at was mining. Montana has been, is a key energy partner and a key mining partner. We got to get back to the business of that. We gotta, it's not just drill, baby drill, but we gotta mine, baby mine. And mining today is a very high tech. Mining is not what it was 125 years ago when, you know, Anaconda was getting started, and it's a very different world today. We graduated about 300 mining and metallurgical degrees in our country last year. We graduated 36,000 lawyers. There's something wrong with that number, particularly when we're in a competition with China around critical minerals.

He also called out pretend environmentalists who don't want mining here in America, but have no problems with far worse operations elsewhere.

Secretary Burgum: "We do it better, cleaner, safer and smarter than anywhere in the world. When we say we don't want it here, and you let China do it, and then they go tear up their own country, tear up Indonesia, tear up Central Africa, using child labor, slave labor. There's nothing good that's happening. I mean, maybe people feel good about themselves when we close our eyes to what's happening- when we stop doing hard things well in America, but we have to get back to being able to build great things. We have to be able to get back to creating great things. That's what made our country great, and we can do it again."

Full audio with Secretary Burgum is in the 2nd half of the below podcast: