Exclusive — Gov. Doug Burgum at the Border: Legacy Media Ignoring the Crisis

Doug Burgum, North Dakota governor and Republican presidential candidate, told Breitbart News while he was at the border that the legacy media are ignoring the crisis unfolding under President Joe Biden.

Burgum spoke to Breitbart News from the southern border on Monday. As governor of North Dakota, he sent national guard service members to the border. He told Breitbart News that they have one engineering group in support of Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) efforts to secure the border and another aviation regiment that works from Texas to California to aid the border patrol. He said he was “proud” of the work of the National Guard troops to secure the border.

Went to the border yesterday to visit our National Guard troops. They’re doing an amazing job – even without the resources and support they need from the Biden Administration.

Here’s the thing: Americans understand that national security is a key part of the job description for… pic.twitter.com/IloIZK1iGN

— Doug Burgum (Text “DOUG” to 70177) (@DougBurgum) August 8, 2023

While he blamed President Joe Biden for “completely failing” to secure the border, he also lamented the legacy media’s failure to highlight the problems surrounding America’s porous border. He explained that while he could see people crossing the Rio Grande River, legacy media reporters could only ask him questions about indictments facing former President Donald Trump.

“While I’m getting interviewed, while I’m getting interviewed by one of them, you know, mainstream media, and they’re asking me questions about indictments, you know? Over my shoulder, you can see people crossing the Rio Grande,” he told Breitbart News.

Burgum said that the border crisis is, in part, “created” by Biden underfunding the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and not giving the border patrol the support and technology they need.

Breitbart News has cataloged how establishment outlets have ignored reporting about Biden’s “more-immigration policies.”

Breitbart News editor Neil Munro noted that several media outlets reported about how unenthused Americans are with Biden’s immigration policies after a Gallup poll found that Americans increasingly oppose illegal and legal immigration. Munro also noted that Washington Post editors have denied the existence of a surge at the border.

A May Harvard-Harris survey found that 70 percent of American voters want stricter border policies once they are told about the current level of illegal immigration.

The North Dakota governor said that he, as president, would use every tool at his disposal to take care of the criminal organizations responsible for trafficking fentanyl across the southern border, noting that roughly 300 Americans die every day from fentanyl overdoses.

The Peace Garden State governor said that the mainstream media often fails to report the fentanyl crisis.

“It is just a fact that when we’re losing that many people a day, and then the mainstream media doesn’t even really cover it. I mean, if we were losing 300 people a day in an airplane crash, after day two, you know that you’d be calling for every aspect of government to go out and try to solve that problem because people are getting on a plane,” Burgum said. “But, the way we just — this thing just gets ignored every day. Now, it’s been ignored for a couple of years under Biden, and we have to do it again, leadership has got to bring attention.”

Burgum also called for a technological revamp of the immigration system. He said that much of the immigration processing at the border is done on paper. He said that this also applies to its entry-exist visa system, which is also supposed to track visa overstays, another area of concern for illegal immigration in America.

Breitbart News’s John Binder reported in June that foreign nationals overstaying their visas, who thus become illegal aliens, hit a “record number” under Biden’s watch.

Burgum recalled, “When I was — when we’re getting the briefing yesterday, when they’re talking about processing, you know, all these millions of people coming across the border, a lot of that processing is still happening with paper, can you imagine that? I mean, no business would survive. If you were doing millions of transactions a year, and you were doing it on paper because of the ability to access the information, track it, who’s expired, who hasn’t. And so we’re super under-invested in most areas of government and the federal government especially is under-invested in it. We need to digitize these processes.”

Burgum cited his experience as former CEO of his software company as to how he would solve the border crisis.

He explained, “One thing I’ve learned as a CEO, which is if you want to solve a problem, you spend time with the people that are on the front lines, you don’t sit back, you know, like Biden and folks in D.C., and say, ‘We’re going to solve the problem sitting back here, we’re going to solve it with the executive director.’ You’ve got to get out, talk to the people that have been doing it. We’ve got people on the border patrol, they’ve been doing this thing for 10, 20, 30 years. They actually remember a time when we had a secure border. They know how to do it again; we just have to give them the tools and the capabilities [to] do it. We’ve got to have, you know, leadership that says it’s a priority.”