What “One of the Dumbest Oil and Gas Hatchet Jobs” Says About 2024
In attempting to bury Doug Burgum's VP chances, CNBC both showcased its own ignorance and helped the North Dakotan
As the 2024 election kicks into high gear and amidst a series of high profile failures by green energy companies, specifically in the electric vehicle industry, President Joe Biden’s allies in the media are working overtime to attack Republicans who are not hostile to American energy, and are sounding increasingly conspiratorial while doing so.
In the latest example, the knives are out for North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, in the race to become Donald Trump’s running mate. Fortunately for Burgum, the knives are incredibly dull.
To hear CNBC tell it, Burgum is hopelessly compromised because he’s made several hundred dollars–in fact, maybe even thousands of dollars–by leasing his family farm to a GOP mega donor, Harold Hamm.
CNBC is breathlessly reporting that:
Burgum made up to $50,000 in royalties while he was governor since late 2022 from the deal with Continental Resources, according to his financial disclosure, details of which have not been reported.
Experts told CNBC that Burgum and his family business likely made thousands more from the agreement with Continental Resources since signing a contract with the company in 2009.
Here’s some important context about CNBC News. It is of course a subsidiary of NBC News, which is a partner of Covering Climate Now, a radical group funded by, among others, the Rockefeller family. One of this media collective’s founders, Kyle Pope, has said that “we are fast approaching the moment when every reporter is going to have to be a climate reporter.”
At a 2023 conference hosted by Covering Climate Now, speakers advocated that reporters “get over” their fear of advocating for one political party (you can guess which one), lied about the high costs of green energy, and warned political journalists that they need to get on board with climate activism in their coverage, per the Washington Free Beacon, which noted:
Judging by Covering Climate Now's member roster and speaker lineup, most of the mainstream media are on board with the group's climate coverage revolution. Journalists who aren't should take heed from Democracy Now! founder Amy Goodman, who used the conference to send a message to any detractors: Watch out.
"We have to make it unacceptable for journalists—even general political journalists—to not ask these questions," she said.
While thousands of dollars isn’t pocket change to most people, remember that Burgum is so fabulously wealthy that he famously doled out Burgum Bucks during his brief presidential campaign, paying people $20 to donate just $1 to his campaign, in order for him to qualify for the debates. That is not something you do if even tens of thousands of dollars in royalties is a meaningful sum of money.
Nevertheless, in a story topping 2,000 words, CNBC would make you think that Burgum signed a deal with the literal devil, without providing even a scintilla of evidence of wrongdoing. As Burgum’s spokesman, Mike Nowatzki, said: “Tens of thousands of families and mineral owners have similar arrangements. As the publicly available disclosures show: The cited agreement began many years before he became governor.”
This ostensibly anti-Burgum salvo comes on the heels of an entire news cycle about Trump asking oil executives for a billion dollars in campaign contributions so that he can, in essence, continue the policies of his first term in office, which were fantastically successful at making American finally an energy net-exporter.
Daniel Turner, who helms a pro-American energy group called Power The Future, noted the contrast between how Trump’s allies in the oil industry get treated compared to the kid gloves that dictate media coverage of Biden’s energy allies. “Biden has spent over $2 trillion on his green agenda and I haven’t seen one report questioning the beneficiaries. Be sure when you spend money on climate change it’s noble and pure,” he cautioned.
Ironically, Biden himself is relying on oil right now, by draining America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve once again in order to lower gas prices before the election–something he did with great effectiveness before the 2022 midterms. Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks correctly noted that, again, “the timing is not coincidence. Biden is looking at the polls and getting nervous, all the while he compromises America’s energy independence.”
What’s actually going on here is nefarious, and it’s not on Burgum’s part. Congressman Kelly Armstrong, who is in the driver’s seat to succeed Burgum in Bismarck, told me that CNBC is “using industry standard terms like paid up lease and royalty like it means something nefarious,” adding that “the whole article is stupid.”
Armstrong, ever the problem-solver, offered himself as tribute to CNBC if the network needs someone to actually explain economics to its viewers. “These people are dumb. If CNBC wants someone to come on and explain an oil and gas lease, I’m available anytime. Just thought they might have someone in their organization that understands the industry considering they are supposed to be a financial news outlet. Literally one of the dumbest oil and gas hatchet jobs I have ever read.”
But this failed attempt to tar Burgum speaks to a bigger phenomenon, which Turner alluded to as well: industry-illiterate journalists are having oppo farmed out to them by Democrats who are pulling out all of the stops before this election.
And I’m not the only one saying this. A conservative consultant said to me that “now that the presidential election is heating up, media outlets that know better are resorting to their same tired tactics. They hate the oil industry and they hate Republicans. By concocting ridiculous conspiracy theories like these, they’re trying to kill two birds with one stone.”
Fortunately, in this case at least, the hit piece failed–and CNBC’s anti-Burgum clickbait makes him look wealthy, successful, and well-connected. Not exactly bad traits for someone angling for a job with Trump.
While this story was undoubtedly meant to harm Burgum by, as Armstrong noted, using standard industry terms to make him look shady, it probably helped the Republican governor. Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor, who runs Canary, an oil and gas drilling company, told CNBC that “nominating Burgum as VP would send a strong signal to the industry that we would have an important voice in a potential Trump administration.”
Obviously this hit piece fell flat. If hatchet jobs like this keep helping the Republicans they’re designed to harm, maybe journalists will learn their lesson.
But I doubt it.