ICYMI: Mike Rogers Only Running to Answer Trump’s Call

Rogers flirts with election denialism to appease Trump as Michiganders get left in the dust

MICHIGAN – Recent reporting from The New York Times shows “not-a-pharma lobbyist” Mike Rogers isn’t making Michiganders’ needs central to his Senate campaign – he’s sucking up to Trump instead.

Rogers, who used to be a critic of Trump, was reportedly called up by Trump himself to run for senate this cycle. Since then, he has proven himself to be a total Trump loyalist, boosting Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud and committing himself to passing every single one of his disastrous policies through the senate.

“Mike Rogers finally said what we all knew out loud: electing him is just another green light for the Trump administration to raise prices on Michiganders and let democracy slip by boosting fabricated claims of election fraud,” said campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner. “Abdul isn’t beholden to anyone but the people of Michigan, and he has made it clear that he is prepared to fight tooth and nail for their interests. Mike is too busy kissing Trump’s ring to realize being Michigan’s next senator means working for the people who elect you. The choice could not be clearer for Michiganders, and they will vote accordingly in November, as they did two years ago.”

Excerpts from the article are listed below:

  • Mr. Rogers, a former Republican representative from Michigan, denounced Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the election as “cause for both concern and alarm.” He ripped the president’s pressure on Georgia’s top election official “as more gangster than presidential.” As for Mr. Trump’s role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Rogers declared, “You’re damn right you had responsibility for this.”

But as he aims to return to Washington, in a Senate race considered key to control of that chamber, Mr. Rogers has become an election skeptic. Minutes after the president’s recent speech filled with outlandish accusations about voting fraud — including a debunked claim about Michigan ballots — Mr. Rogers weighed in, suggesting that further scrutiny of the election was warranted…

  • Mr. Rogers has also suggested that voting irregularities sank his Senate bid two years ago — based on an unproven claim about late-arriving Detroit ballots that Mr. Trump has amplified and that echoed accusations made by election deniers in 2020…
  • “Now he’s toeing the MAGA line,” said former Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who served with Mr. Rogers in the House and calls him a friend. “I don’t want to speculate on his motives for talking about the 2020 election, but that election is over. The 2024 election is over…”
  • Mr. Rogers’s campaign did not provide any evidence to back up his claim about his 2024 defeat…
  • Mr. Rogers was working as a CNN commentator in 2020 when Mr. Trump rejected Joe Biden’s victory and argued the election had been rigged.

“I think it’s very corrosive,” Mr. Rogers said in one of several cable network appearances criticizing the president. Mr. Rogers also wrote columns in The Detroit News and The Washington Post that accused Mr. Trump of setting “an exceptionally dangerous precedent” and of making claims “without proof, only conspiracy and hearsay…”

  • But Mr. Rogers’s political calculus appeared to change the next year, when he decided to run for an open Senate seat. He joined a crowded Republican field and landed Mr. Trump’s endorsement. Mr. Trump viewed the former congressman as the strongest Senate candidate in a state key to his re-election, and the two men built a rapport during the 2024 campaign, according to a person familiar with the relationship who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The editorial board of The Detroit Free Press reported in June 2024 that when it asked the Senate candidate whether Mr. Biden won the 2020 election, he refused to answer — a sign of Mr. Rogers’s newfound loyalty to Mr. Trump…

  • “The president called and said, ‘Mike, I need you to do this. I need you in the Senate, and here’s the only thing I’m going to ask you: win,’ ” Mr. Rogers told a Republican group in Muskegon, Mich., in October 2025, according to video reviewed by The Times….
  • “Mike Rogers knows better,” said Christopher Thomas, who served as Michigan’s elections director for more than three decades before becoming an adviser to voting officials in Detroit. “Mike Rogers knows no one stole the election from him in 2024, and he knows full well no one stole the election from Trump in 2020…”
  • But Mr. Trump remains fixated on voting fraud and has seized on Mr. Rogers’s claim about his defeat in the 2024 Senate race. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club in January, the president asserted Mr. Rogers “won” a Senate seat two years ago and said, “I think they took that away from you last time.”

“They rigged the election on you,” he added.

  • Mr. Rogers vowed that if he were elected to the Senate, he would help pass legislation backed by the president that would impose nationwide voter identification and proof of citizenship requirements and limit voting by mail.

You can read the full article here.

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