Gov. Burgum Defends Calling Biden a Dictator

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who is reportedly on former President Donald Trump's vice president short list, maintained his position on Sunday that President Joe Biden is acting like a dictator.

During Burgum's appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," the network that will host the presidential debate on Thursday, the interview started out on a charged note.

Biden has shown he has debating prowess by convincing "America that that laptop was fake," Burgum began. The subsequent result during the 2020 election was a social and televised media blackout of mentioning Hunter Biden's laptop, as revealed in the Twitter files.

But in the short moment of mentioning the laptop, CNN's Kaitlan Collins segued away from the topic, showing Burgum in series of clips calling President Biden a dictator. Collins then prompted and framed the North Dakota governor's view of the president as simply a policy dispute on "immigration or student loans."

"I understand you don't like President Biden's policies on immigration or student loans. But, respectfully, I mean, you're calling the democratically elected president a dictator?"

Burgum responded that Biden has bypassed the legislative and judicial branches of government with executive orders.

"You don't like his executive orders and you don't like his policies," Collins replied. "I understand that. I don't think anyone expects the Republican governor to agree with President Biden on that. But that's not a dictatorship."

Burgum pressed that his description of the Biden administration acting as a dictatorship stems from three issues: the southern border, inflation, and the media's obstinance to covering Trump and President Biden fairly.

"Well, I think again, part of where this word has come from has been a nonstop media attack on President Trump saying that, Oh, that he might use executive orders when he takes office."

Burgum said he was attempting to "make the point here that under this current administration, most of the changes that are driving inflation in our country, the stuff he's not doing on the border, which he could be doing with executive orders — I mean, the open borders and the inflation are things that he's doing by himself alone, ignoring the other branches of government."

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