On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of U.S. Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who clearly has been taking hairstyle tips from Donald Trump on how to rock a comb over. Rounds, a former governor of South Dakota, once tried to outlaw all abortion in his state, and was turned back by the courts for it being a violation of Roe vs. Wade. He also insisted the Keystone Pipeline would create 40,000 new jobs in South Dakota alone, which was a gross exaggeration over four times the amount the company who would have owned the pipeline claimed there would be (It was more like 50, in reality). That’s not his only big lie, though, he actually has argued in favor of repealing Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform on the fallacy that the economy got WORSE after it was passed (the opposite is true). Sen. Rounds also was investigated for an immigration scandal, where he supposedly abused the EB5-Visa program to offer green cards to foreign investors if they would pony up $500,000 into beef packing plants in South Dakota. The visas were then not given, and the beef packing plant in question went bankrupt… and the money vanished with several of Rounds’ closest aides. Rather than face criminal penalties, Mike Rounds’ cabinet secretary committed suicide. After almost a year and a half, someone was finally charged with a crime in the EB5 Scandal. Regrettably, it was not Mike Rounds, but his associate Joop Bollen, who was charged with five felonies.
On March 1st, 2016, Rounds commented on GOP Presidential Nominee Donald Trump, specifically, Trump’s reluctance to disavow the endorsement of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which Rounds took time to defend him for. Yeah, you got that right. On top of all the other horrible things about Mike Rounds, he also doesn’t object to his party being linked with the Klan that much.
If the EB-5 scandal didn’t already make it plainly clear how comfortable Rounds is corruption, we have to point out that he also went out of his way in April of 2018 to defend former EPA Director Scott Pruitt, who was the subject of over a dozen investigations into corruption, saying that people calling for his resignation were “nitpicking”. From where we’re sitting, those nits were the size of house cats, at least.
And not surprisingly, Sen. Rounds has been on board with every other terrible idea Donald Trump has managed to float through the Senate, including approving every member of Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors”, voting for the attempt the Senate GOP made at the “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, and he also voted for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, frequently complaining about protesters in the Capitol who had more sense than Rounds, at least enough to know that you shouldn’t put a rapist on the bench, let alone on the highest court in the land, and claiming that the “FBI Investigation” the GOP made into accusations against Kavanaugh was adequate (in spite of the fact that they weren’t even asked to interview Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge, who was in the room when the assault happened.
Rounds’ seat in the Senate is up in 2020, and he already has a primary challenger in the form of Scyller Borglum (not a character in Harry Potter), and already has a huge financial advantage, with almost $2 million in fundraising saved up. It will be interesting to see if the impeachment trial, however, affects Rounds’ re-election chances.