Republican Sen. Mike Rounds rejects Trump's claims about 2020: 'The election was fair'

The 2020 election was "as fair as we've seen", according to Sen. Mike Rounds, who rejected former President Donald Trump's election claims.

The South Dakota Republican, who was reelected to a second term in the Senate in 2020, said during an interview on ABC's "This Week" that there were no cases of mass fraud.

The senator told George Stephanopoulos that they looked at over 60 different accusations. There were some issues, but they would not have changed the outcome of the vote in a single state.

He said that the election was fair. We did not win the election as Republicans.

If the GOP wants to regain control of Congress in the fall and win the White House in four years, they need to move past the voter fraud allegations that have consumed the party for some time, according to Rounds.

He said that they need to focus on what it will take to win the presidency. If we tell our people not to vote because there's cheating going on, we're going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage.

Let's focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that, but we have to let people know that they can believe in the fairness of the elections, and that is in every single state that we looked at.

After the 2020 presidential election and before the Senate elections in Georgia that were won by the Democrats, Trump criticized the election process in the state, which many saw as counter-productive in boosting turnout.

Rounds told Stephanopoulos that he doesn't support Congress trying to block Trump from running again.

He said that a president has a shield of office that restricts the ability of the courts to address issues.

The courts are the place where those questions should be answered. I don't think this will be up to members of the United States Senate or the House.

The senator wouldn't rule out backing the former president in the election.

He said he would take a hard look at it. I have told people that I will support the Republican nominee for president. I'm not sure if the eventual nominee has shown up yet.