In the world of politics, common sense is pretty hard to come by these days — just ask South Dakota’s Mike Rounds.
On Sunday, the Republican senator appeared on ABC News’ “This Week” to discuss a variety of hot-button issues with program co-anchor Jonathan Karl, including President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to be the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In his announcement, the incoming president praised Patel as “a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”
In an apparent attempt to gin up opposition to Patel’s nomination, Karl, a left-wing hacktivist, asked Rounds if he was “surprised” by Trump’s pick and whether the selection concerns “concern[s]” him. While the South Dakota senator defended the president-elect’s constitutional right “to decide who he wants to offer a nomination for,” he gave cover for the FBI’s corrupt behavior by cheerleading the disgraceful tenure of Director Christopher Wray.
“I think [Trump] picked a very good man to be the director of the FBI when he did that in his first term,” Rounds said of Wray. “When we meet with him behind closed doors, I’ve had no objections to the way that he’s handled himself. And so I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now.”
To echo Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, does Mike Rounds hear himself?
In exactly what ways has Christopher Wray shown himself to be a “good man” worthy of keeping his job?
Under Wray, the FBI’s baseless Russia collusion hoax was allowed to go on unabated. He also presided over the agency’s unprecedented raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and permitted it to pressure social media companies to censor the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election to the benefit of Joe Biden.
In addition, Wray has overseen the FBI’s burying of information that implicated the Biden family’s foreign business dealings; purging of pro-Trump agency officials; targeting of Catholics and parents at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists; concocting a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; concealing of a trans-identifying Christian school shooter’s manifesto; and targeting of peaceful Jan. 6 protestors.
This list doesn’t even include Wray’s personal efforts to stonewall Congress to seemingly hide information on the Bidens’ overseas business operations and further leftists’ conspiracy theory that Trump wasn’t hit by a bullet during the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this year.
But Rounds’ pathetic simping for Wray and the country’s most corrupt agency didn’t stop there.
When asked by Karl if he believes it’s “a mistake” for Trump to give Wray the pink slip and why he thinks the incoming president is “determined to fire the FBI director, let alone one that he nominated in the first place,” the South Dakota Republican waffled. Rather than dismantle the dishonestly framed question using any of the aforementioned examples of FBI corruption under Wray, Rounds simply regurgitated the talking point that Trump has the right to appoint whoever he wants.
The Senate “will give a benefit of the doubt to the president with any one of his nominees, but then we have a constitutional role to play in that we — we provide advice and consent,” Rounds said.
That Rounds — who represents a state Trump won by nearly 30 points last month — is defending Wray’s destructive leadership is unconscionable. Then again, it’s not surprising given his track record of shilling for the establishment.
According to Heritage Action‘s congressional scorecard, in the last session alone, Rounds has supported shipping billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, reauthorizing federal spying tools previously weaponized to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign, and approving major spending packages that have increased the U.S. national debt. South Dakota’s junior senator also had to be shamed into voicing opposition to the radical pro-abortion amendment that appeared on his state’s ballot earlier this year.
But don’t expect to hear Rounds tout any of these votes or his glowing views of Wray during a prospective 2026 reelection bid. Like many of his GOP colleagues, he’ll continue to throw red meat bills that have little to zero chance of passing to the Republican base while simultaneously funding the very system being used to target and harass his voters.
There is no rationale for excusing or defending an FBI that exists solely to protect Democrats and assail the left’s political enemies. Any GOP official who doesn’t “have any complaints” about such weaponization and Wray’s conduct is undeserving of public office.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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