Republican US Senator Mike Rounds from South Dakota

Former US President Donald Trump has blasted Republican Senator Mike Rounds after the South Dakota lawmaker rejected Trump’s claims about the outcome of the disputed 2020 presidential election.

Rounds on Sunday said that he didn’t subscribe to Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him by the powerful US deep state.

The senator said that there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.
The election was fair - as fair as we’ve seen, he added. We simply did not win the election as Republicans for the presidency.

In response, Trump issued a lengthy statement on Monday. He reiterated his assertion that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud and vowed to withhold his support from Rounds the next time the South Dakota senator is up for reelection in 2026.

Is he crazy or just stupid? Trump said in the statement. The numbers are conclusive, and the fraudulent and irregular votes are massive. 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 those are the only ones, the weak, who will break away. Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again.

Trump also described Rounds as a RINO - Republican in name only - before repeating that he will not endorse the senator again.

The Radical Left Democrats and RINOS, like ‘Senator’ Mike Rounds, do not make it easy for our Country to succeed, Trump said. He is a weak and ineffective leader, and I hereby firmly pledge that he will never receive my Endorsement again!

Commenting to Press TV on Rounds’s statement, American journalist Don DeBar said, The question I would ask each and every one of the people who assert that Trump or his supporters are crazy for suggesting that the presidential election could be stolen is this: Do you believe that Bush stole the 2000 or 2004 elections, or that Trump and the Russians stole the 2016 election (which actually is completely and totally absurd to the point of indicating a serious mental disorder).

I’d seriously like to see these people go on the record directly responding to that question, which apparently no one has thought to ask yet, he added.

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected in the face of the most aggressive negative campaign US intelligence and US media have ever conducted. For the 4 years he governed, the FBI, the CIA, the leadership of both political parties and the entire US media attempted to drive him from office. Despite all of that, Trump nearly won in 2020 and, absent massive fraud, would have been re-elected, DeBar said in an earlier comment to Press TV on Thursday.

Trump has been casting doubt on the outcome of his loss by insisting it was the result of fraud. He has said that the 2020 presidential election was the greatest Election Hoax in history.

Trump’s claims have significantly delegitimatized the democratic process in the United States. A recent poll has found that at least 50 percent of Republican voters surveyed believe their vote will not be counted accurately the next time they cast a ballot.

A new ABC/Ipsos poll finds that just 20 percent of the public say that it is very confident about the system.

The new findings, released last week, show a significant fall from 37 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll carried out in the days after the insurrection last year.

The lack of strong confidence in the US’ ability to hold an honest election crosses partisan lines.

Among Democrats, 30 percent believe they are very confident in the election systems overall, while only 1 in 5 people considers themselves very confident in the country’s elections.