Special Poll
Burgum did not fully endorse the idea that public assistance is a form of bribery to secure votes. He clarified, “I don’t think that’s the intention he meant when he said that,” but he revisited the notion of vote-buying when discussing President Joe Biden’s proposal to partially forgive student loan debt.
Burgum criticized the financial implications of the debt forgiveness, stating, “You start trying to give away hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and it’s not even — it’s like we’re borrowing to give it away. It’s not tax and spend. It’s borrow, borrow from the Chinese, and give it away.”
He further expressed his concerns about the motivations behind such policies, suggesting they act as pre-election incentives: “Citizens understand those are like pre-election payoffs. Those are like, hey, folks, please vote for us because we’re relieving your debt. So at what point does it cross over, programs like student debt, to just vote-buying?” He viewed this as an unprecedented attempt to secure votes through financial relief.
Burgum, a two-term governor who was briefly a candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential race, had dropped out by December. In July 2023, he initiated a campaign offering $20 gift cards to individual donors to meet the donor threshold required for participating in the GOP’s first debate, described by his spokesperson Lance Trover as a measure to alleviate “Bidenflation” and provide economic relief.
On a related note, during a Sunday interview with host Jake Tapper, Burgum also defended former President Trump concerning his ongoing criminal trial in New York, asserting, “If it was anybody else, this trial wouldn’t even be happening,” and labeling a potential conviction as “a travesty of justice.”