South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said Michael Cohen’s recording of President Donald Trump doesn’t come as a big surprise and shouldn’t be viewed as bombshell news.
Rounds said if he could ask the president anything, it wouldn’t be about the tape or the alleged payments, but about tariffs. (RELATED: CNN Devotes Entire Segment To Trump’s Personal Cell Phone Use)
“My questions would immediately go to the tariffs and to cyber security … we have critical things in front of us,” Rounds said.
CNN “New Day” co-host John Berman pushed the issue and continued to place emphasis on the Cohen tape, but Rounds wouldn’t bite.
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“There was no surprise,” Rounds declared. “There’s no expectation that that wasn’t the case as far as I was concerned. And so once again, look, in D.C. right now when we talk about what the issues are … the Senate is focused on policy right now.”
“It is not an issue that we spend a lot of time on,” he added.
Berman tried to goad Rounds one last time, asking if he was “okay” with Trump’s behavior, but he failed to elicit the answer he was looking for.
“I don’t think we’re okay with it. It is just simply not an item of surprise to us,” Rounds concluded. “It is an item of interest in the gossip columns probably, but for us we’ve got our jobs to do on a daily basis, and that’s what we’re focusing on. So while we’ve got these side issues that are going on right now, but in the meantime we’ve got critical issues in front of us worth billions and billions of dollars to our country.”
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