Trump Asks Mike Rounds ‘Crazy or Stupid’ After GOP Senator Calls 2020 Race Fair

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Former President Donald Trump called Senator Mike Rounds a “RINO” —Republican in name only — after conservative South Dakota said the 2020 election was not rigged.

Trump said Monday that Rounds “just woke up” to the issue, and asked if the senator was “crazy or just stupid.”

“The only reason he did this is because he got my endorsement and easily won his state in 2020, so now he thinks he has time, and that are only one, the weak, who will break away,” the former president said. “Even though it’s not been 5 years since his election, I will never endorse this jerk again.”

Rounds refuted Trump’s baseless claims about career fraud in 2020 in an appearance Sunday on ABC News. The senator said “due diligence” was done to investigate the accusations but no widespread irregularities were found.

“The election was fair, as we have seen,” he said. “We didn’t just win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And going forward — and that’s the way we want to look at it — going forward, we need to refocus on what it takes to win the presidency.”

Rounds ’comments were made following the first anniversary of unrest in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 as thousands of pro-Trump supporters stormed the building to disrupt Joe Biden’s certification of election victory. Rounds voted to confirm the results, despite 147 Republican members voting to overthrow the race.

Trump responded Monday by calling Rounds a “weak and ineffective leader.”

Former President Donald Trump called Senator Mike Rounds a RINORepublican by name only after conservative South Dakota said the 2020 election was not rigged. Here, Trump spoke at a rally on Sept. 25, 2021 in Perry, Georgia. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

“Radical Left Democrats and RINOS, like‘ Senator ’Mike Rounds, are not making it easy for our Country to succeed,” the former president said.

Newsweek reached out to the Rounds office for comment.

Trump went on to make baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and made the point of endorsing candidates for the midterm cycle supporting his statements. Among the targets in the Republican Party are Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, Michigan Representative Peter Meijer and others who have been critical of the former president and voted to impeach him because of the unrest in the Capitol.

But GOP operatives warn that Trump’s insistence on re-rehashing the race in 2020 could only hurt the party going forward. Rounds told ABC News they would be at a “huge loss” if “we just look back and tell our people not to vote because there’s cheating going on.”

Rounds won re-election to the U.S. Senate in November 2020. He defeated Democratic nominee Dan Alhers with approximately 66 percent of the vote.

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