INTERVIEW: Rep. Mike Rogers on Trump's support, the Democrats' "hot dumpster fire mess" in Michigan, the "renaissance of manufacturing," and more

In Michigan, the tables have turned for 2026; while Democrats are embroiled in a sprint to the left in their primary, President Donald Trump recently cleared the field for former Rep. Mike Rogers on the GOP side.

Rogers, who would currently be a United States Senator were it not for a Libertarian Party candidate siphoning off 56,697 votes in 2024 during his race against now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), spoke with the Washington Reporter about the “hot dumpster fire mess” Democrats are facing and what he wants to achieve in the Senate.

“You’ve got to love it when they're spending their money on themselves,” Rogers said of the Democrats’ primary. “I went through this. It's not fun. I'm sure they're experiencing the same lack of joy every day.”

Earlier this year, President Trump worked to preserve key production tax credits in the One Big Beautiful Bill that will allow Michigan automakers, including Ford, to continue to develop factories and create U.S. jobs. These provisions have received widespread praise from automotive groups and business leaders. Rogers explained to us that he wants to work with President Trump to continue developing auto jobs and ensure that “[w]e can build cars here, and the business environment just has to be right here. And we can help create that.”

The Democrats’ sprint to the left is enabling Rogers to roll out endorsements from both his fellow Republicans to ensure that he wins his primary convincingly, and from surrogates — particularly in law enforcement — who will help him in the general election. As befits a candidate who spent 2024 on the trail, he already has his to-do list ready.

“What I will do when I get there is focus on ship-building,” Rogers said. “We do ship component building here. We used to build under 700 foot ships here in the state. In the new modern navy, guess what we're going to need — we're not going to need great, big carriers, or at least as many — we're going to need smaller, more mobile ships and unmanned ships. Guess where it'd be a great place to build that? That would be here in the state of Michigan.”

Rogers explained that decades of Democrats holding both Senate seats has harmed Michiganders — especially with Trump back in the White House.

“We didn't make the production schedule list of states that were going to be involved in the Golden Dome,” he said. “Our aerospace engineering here is alive and well, and you just need a senator who's able to drive over to the White House and actually have a conversation. When you look at it, we've had two Democrats for 30 years saying the same thing, voting the same way every time. And now they've just launched into why Trump is terrible every single day of the week. I guarantee you Michigan is not going to pop up in the top of the list when you have that going on.” Slotkin recently skipped votes in the Senate to appear on Stephen Colbert’s soon-to-be-canceled TV show.

“I worked with Donald Trump the last two years to make sure we take advantage of making Michigan that high end manufacturing state, through shipbuilding, through aerospace; we think there's a whole bunch of things that we can do, including automotive, by the way, get the trade hurdles out of the way,” Rogers said. “And guess what? We can build cars here, and the business environment just has to be right here. And we can help create that. One of the things I look forward to working with a Republican governor on is making sure that manufacturing is attracted to the state by costs. I'm not talking about big cash giveaway programs. I'm talking about making it attractive for manufacturers to be here.”

Part of that economic revival, which he called “Michigan’s renaissance of manufacturing,” is about focusing on jobs, job creators, and economic opportunity.

“People here are tired of watching their kids and their grandkids have to leave the state to get good jobs,” he said. “And it's frustrating to people who have built their lives here. We talk about how we're going to make sure that they can get to make that their choice. You don't have to pack up and leave. You can choose to stay here. And there’s going to be great opportunity here, and this is going to be a great place to raise your family. Those are really important, and so it's jobs, it's the economy, it's education.”

Part of the Republican Party’s national focus on economic revitalization is the One Big, Beautiful BIll (OBBB). While Rogers wasn’t in office to vote for it, he told the Reporter that he would have firmly supported it. Rep. Haley Stevens (D., Mich.), who is running in the Democratic Party’s primary, voted against it in the House, and Rogers said that all of his potential opponents across the aisle would have opposed the bill; that stance, he explained, would devastate popular and necessary programs like Medicaid.

“They were saying that [the bill] is cutting people off of Medicaid,” Rogers explained. “Now, come on, that's ridiculous. I want to help people, and I want Medicaid to be there for the people it was intended to help, like children, seniors, the disabled, and people who are a little down on their luck; let's help them all. But we also have to ask you to help yourself, if you're an able bodied worker. And so again, this is going to be a big part of this race, and they try to make it out as they're taking people off who don't deserve it. And they also put off, I don't know, 1.4 million illegal immigrants who should have never been on the rolls in the first place.”

“If you want to protect Medicaid,” he said, “you should have been all for that bill.”

Another area of commonality between Rogers and the Trump administration is the investigation, led by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, into what is now referred to as Obamagate — a scandal first reported by the Reporter, which alleges that former President Barack Obama ordered his intelligence community to doctor reports ahead of Trump’s 2016 swearing in that could be used to falsely tar the incoming president as a Russian asset.

Rogers, a former FBI agent who was reportedly vetted to replace disgraced FBI head James Comey, said that “this is something we all should worry about, and Democrats [should worry] as well.”

“If the government can do what they're suggesting that Obama and his team — I think [John] Brennan was one of the big cheerleaders of this — did to a guy who’s very wealthy and running to be president, what can they do to you? I worry about this a lot, that people aren't paying attention to it for what it is, and it is as serious as you get.”

“I won't say treason,” he continued, “because I don't know if they worked for a foreign government. I will say high crimes and misdemeanors for sure. They're going to have to prove it, and I'm looking forward to seeing the information. But when you use the intelligence services and the FBI for a political purpose against an opponent, my Lord, that is exactly why we you know, we have our country as it stands today. That is exactly what our Founders said they didn't want to have happen.”

Finally, Rogers also laid out his foreign policy vision, which entails an engaged but not entangled America, and he said that Trump is the master of that vision.

“I'll use Iran as the greatest example,” he said, referring to Trump’s strikes that decimated the country’s nuclear weapons program. Those were “very targeted, very surgical, huge outcome for safety and security of the United States and our allies, including Israel, and really even our Arab League partners, if they want to admit it or not. That strike was America engaged in the world, you're stopping something pretty awful, but you're not sending tanks over the border. You're not sending the 101st Airborne Division in. That, to me, is the engaged policy that the U.S. needs,” he said.

But, “our biggest growing threat is China,” he said. “It is this axis that China has formed with Russia, Iran, and North Korea that's going to pose real security risks for the United States. And we need to make sure that we're addressing it in a way that gets ahead of it…And does that mean that you would say we want to arm to Taiwan so they can defend themselves? Yes. Does it mean you want to have permanent stations of troops in Taiwan? I don't think that's the right answer. That's entangled.”

“We don't need to be entangled,” he said. But “we need to be engaged.”

Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Mike Rogers, lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:

Congressman Rogers, thanks for chatting today; you recently got a big endorsement, from President Donald Trump. The last time we were talking for a story was the day you launched your campaign. How had you been approaching this primary election prior to the endorsement, and how does this change the course of the Senate race for you?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

We spent a lot of time in the beginning trying to consolidate support around the state. And what was so good about that is that we decided we were going to get a co-chair representing every county in the state by December of this year, meaning slowly and surely, just building this out this organization of support. Well, by the end of the first quarter, we had every single county covered with a co-chair, and now we've exceeded some 160 co-chairs, and that was before the endorsement. What we were trying to do is let people understand what happened and how we can win. And we spent a lot of time on the road and meeting with folks who were either skeptical about that or were skeptical the last time. Our effort was to consolidate support as early as we can, so that we put ourselves in the best position, and we were able to do that. And then, of course, getting the Trump endorsement just kind of puts the good housekeeping seal of approval on all that.

Washington Reporter:

Yours is a great example of this, and North Carolina's is a great example of this effort by Republicans to consolidate early behind the best candidates in these races that are key to Senate control. How are you seeing this play out on the ground in terms of being able to raise more money, lock up that local support even more now that, as you just said, you've got that good housekeeping seal of approval?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

When you have a primary or the threat of a primary, people want to wait and see what happens. In the last election, I think 70 percent of our money came after the primary last year, which was way too late, because, think of it — August 8 in an election year, it's just not enough time to put all the resources toward ads and all the other things you need to do. And so what we found this time is that people were wanting to be in and we didn't have a ton of people saying they weren't going to be with us, but we did have people say, ‘hey, we want to wait for a little bit and see what happens.’ And so that slows down fundraising and slows down some organization. So when you get that answered sooner, the better off you are. We got this settled before I was even in the race last time in terms of timing, that's huge. And so that will make a difference. It'll make a difference on fundraising. It will make a difference on organization. It'll make it a difference on statewide endorsements; we're still out there talking to people, getting them on board. All of that really helps us to that end.

Washington Reporter:

You've already racked up a lot of endorsements specifically from local law enforcement officials. How does that fit into your your plan for winning?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

One thing that the government is supposed to do is keep people safe. There was such an effort to treat criminals better than police officers in the last administration and with Democrats in general trying to defund the police, it really did offer a level of instability and insecurity in these neighborhoods. Places around the state that have a little bit higher crime rates, we've spent some time there and are trying to let them know that the cavalry is coming. And so getting that out early to show people that the law and order guy is here, and we're going to make sure our communities are safe for our kids. This became a really important part of what we're trying to convince Michiganders they need in the United States Senate; we just haven't had that kind of approach in a very long time, and so they'll get it this time. Protecting your neighborhoods is all about making sure that our police officers are taken care of, respected, and can stop crime in the way we know they can.

Washington Reporter:

As you look across the aisle, it seems like the Democrats are experiencing what you experienced last cycle — lack of unity, very divisive, costly primary. How do you handicap what's going on over there?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

Oh, it's a hot dumpster fire mess, and it's about time that happened to the Democrats for sure. And they're just all over the map, pulling to the left. I sense this a lot. One thing about Michigan is that we are not a progressive Democrat state, and all of the candidates have this progressive Democrat bent to them, and they're talking about it in the primary in a way that I think is going to put them completely out of step by the time of the election. Now they all have been all talking progressive, and then every once while, they get reminded that they're supposed to say they're centrists, but their positions, their campaigning, the kinds of things they're talking about, including one candidate full on embracing Zohran Mamdani from New York City and all that he represents, trying to bring it to Michigan, just tells you that we have got the opportunity to build and communicate a better Michigan for the future than all of the kind of really out of step conversations the Democrats are having. You’ve got to love it when they're spending their money on themselves. I went through this. It's not fun. I'm sure they're experiencing the same lack of joy every day. But you go through all that, and it just allows us to work toward a victory in November.

Washington Reporter:

Do you have a sense of who the leader of the Democratic Party is for these Michigan Democrats? You mentioned Zohran Mamdani, but is there someone in their party who is actually in charge?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

They have a state party that functions, I'll give them that. But you don't get a real sense that they have real clear leadership. I just don't think the Democrats know who they are today. They're just all over the map. They had to pay some organization $20 million to tell them that they need to cuss more to get male votes. I mean, my Lord. By the way, I could have done that for a buck fifty. And I argue you don't really need to cuss more. I could charge them a lot less money. When you think about how ridiculous that is, and you see it coming out in some of these candidates, they're trying to pretend they're the part of the bro factor or whatever, because they just didn't do well with male voters the last go round. I don't know. I just don't think it works. Tells me that they don't know who they are. They don't know what direction they want, and this is maybe the one time I agree with James Carville — the Democrat Party today looks like a cracked out clown car. Well, I found something I can agree on with James Carville.

Washington Reporter:

Your background in both the public and private sectors encompasses a lot of the issues I imagine that are on the minds of voters in Michigan. What are those issues that you hear most about from voters?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

Well, the reaction we get when we talk about the Michigan's renaissance of manufacturing and getting us back into the game of being part of the arsenal of democracy for our country and all of the jobs that that brings, that means something. So it's jobs. It's job creation, it's opportunity. People here are tired of watching their kids and their grandkids have to leave the state to get good jobs. And it's frustrating to people who have built their lives here. We talk about how we're going to make sure that they can get to make that their choice. You don't have to pack up and leave. You can choose to stay here. And there’s going to be great opportunity here, and this is going to be a great place to raise your family. Those are really important, and so it's jobs, it's the economy, it's education. Michigan is now down into 44th in the country on education. That can't stand, and it's a state issue, I believe that. But we talk a lot about our reading proposals and how to get people back to reading again at grade level, and that's where we can be a value added at the federal level too, along with, I hope, a Republican governor here. All of those issues come forward, and then the national security picture, just making sure our military respects the men and women who serve, and that the military is worthy of their service, and that we are structured in a way that's going to face future demands here of what China is trying to do, and what we see with the threats around the world. And so those are kind of the big issues; we'll find issues that narrow that down in certain communities over the next 12 months, but from the big set of issues, that's really it: it’s jobs, it's opportunity, it's a better way of life, it's affordability, it's getting your kids a good education and having the opportunity to stay here in the state. And part of that, by the way, is developing our workforce so that we can meet this demand in the next generation of manufacturing.

Washington Reporter:

Obviously a signature piece of legislation thus far this year is the One Big, Beautiful Bill. There are a lot of provisions in it that are great for Michigan. I've talked about this with people like Tom Barrett. One of them is the measure protecting battery plants like Ford's BlueOval in Battery Park. This is 1,700+ Michigan jobs. How do you want to work with President Trump on expanding that auto industry in Michigan and keeping people in-state and attracting people to Michigan from around the country?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

One of the first things that we have to do is make sure our workforce is prepared when we have these opportunities for better manufacturing. What I will do when I get there is focus on ship-building. We do ship component building here. We used to build under 700 foot ships here in the state. In the new modern navy, guess what we're going to need — we're not going to need great, big carriers, or at least as many — we're going to need smaller, more mobile ships and unmanned ships. Guess where it'd be a great place to build that? That would be here in the state of Michigan. We didn't make the production schedule list of states that were going to be involved in the Golden Dome. Our aerospace engineering here is alive and well, and you just need a senator who's able to drive over to the White House and actually have a conversation. When you look at it, we've had two Democrats for 30 years saying the same thing, voting the same way every time. And now they've just launched into why Trump is terrible every single day of the week. I guarantee you Michigan is not going to pop up in the top of the list when you have that going on. I worked with Donald Trump the last two years to make sure we take advantage of making Michigan that high end manufacturing state, through shipbuilding, through aerospace; we think there's a whole bunch of things that we can do, including automotive, by the way, get the trade hurdles out of the way. And guess what? We can build cars here, and the business environment just has to be right here. And we can help create that. One of the things I look forward to working with a Republican governor on is making sure that manufacturing is attracted to the state by costs. I'm not talking about big cash giveaway programs. I'm talking about making it attractive for manufacturers to be here. And part of that, again, is the workforce. I want to make sure Pell Grants get pulled over to all of the the trade certificates and things that you need, like welding and electrician and HVAC. You can get an Elizabethan degree paid for in the country, but you can't get your your welding certificate, or your electrician certificate; that doesn't make any sense to me. So I want to make sure we're focused on what America needs and what Michigan needs. We're going to make sure that can happen. And so I'm very fired up about it and how we get cheaper consistent energy here, there's some expansion of nuclear. We ought to look at that for our state as a really good, environmentally friendly, cheap way to get energy into big usage, like manufacturing plants and other things. So I think there's a lot that we can do at the federal level to reignite that renaissance of Michigan manufacturing, and I'm very, very fired up about it. I worked in a job like this, by the way, so I I get it, I understand these jobs, and I know how important they are.

Washington Reporter:

Another one of the goals of the One Big, Beautiful Bill is these historic tax cuts for hard-working families. Going back to my conversation with Tom Barrett, for example, when it comes to Michigan, tax breaks on auto loans sound huge for your state, and no tax on overtime. It seems you would have voted for this, and every Democrat in your race would have opposed the bill. Is that fair to say? Can you talk a little bit more about what the One Big, Beautiful Bill means for Michigan auto manufacturers? As you were saying, you've worked on an auto floor, and what do you make about the fact that clearly these provisions would help your state, and yet every Democrat would not have voted for them?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

This should be no surprise to anyone; Democrats believe that high taxation helps you and helps your family. It does not. It is not that we tax too little, it's that we spend too much back in Washington, D.C., and so I think this bill takes a good bite in the right direction on that. And just a couple of the provisions you mentioned. In terms of overtime. There's 3 million Michigan families that depend on overtime as a part of their income. They just got a significant tax break, and these are the hard working families that are getting up every day and playing by the rules of going to work; that will have a major impact, and it's going to help our manufacturing base here too, that is starting to add second shifts and third shifts in some overtime, because some of this work is coming back to the United States. That's really, really significant. I listen to waiters and waitresses across Michigan. No tax on tips. It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but when you're working hard to put food on your table and take care of your kids and, oh, by the way, every school season costs a chunk of change, getting your kids backpacks and all the accouterments you need to go in and be a good learner. Guess what? Those tax breaks mean something to those working families and Democrats don't think about that. They all talk about the middle class like it is some arbitrary thing that they need to talk about, that some speechwriter wrote for them, or they paid some consulting firm $20 million to say ‘save middle class as often as you can.’ They have so walked away from the middle class. And this package is full of it. And by the way, had they not passed it, the Democrats were encouraging the largest tax increase on working families in the history of the country. That’s real money. You start thinking about what that means to working people. By the way, the secure border, well, that wasn't all that important to them before, we saw that. It kind of cements that secure border thing. At the end of the day, it's going to be really good, and I'll talk about this upfront, because it’s important: the Democrats want to make an issue of it. In the bill where they talked about Medicaid, they were counting people who they asked to work 20 hours a week. And by the way, it didn't even have to be work. It could be community service. They were saying that that is cutting people off of Medicaid. Now, come on, that's ridiculous. I want to help people, and I want Medicaid to be there for the people it was intended to help, like children, seniors, the disabled, and people who are a little down on their luck; let's help them all. But we also have to ask you to help yourself, if you're an able bodied worker. And so again, this is going to be a big part of this race, and they try to make it out as they're taking people off who don't deserve it. And they also put off, I don't know, 1.4 million illegal immigrants who should have never been on the rolls in the first place. If you want to protect Medicaid, you should have been all for that bill.

Washington Reporter:

The transition between economy and national security, is trade. What is Trump's trade agenda looking like for Michiganders on the ground?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

Well, this is anecdotal, but it's real. There was a guy I was talking to who, for the first time in 25 years, is adding a second shift in his factory. And I said, ‘really?’ And he said, more or less, ‘bring on the tariffs.’ And I said, ‘really? What do you think's happening?’ He said the auto companies called them right after Trump announced it and said, ‘we normally we would source this work to China, and you're doing good work. We're going to source it with your company.’ There you have it, bam, end of story. So over time, this is going to be helpful to the average Michigan family. The president is actually trying to undo this thing in a short period of time that took decades of people not paying attention. He's trying to fix it as fast as he can with as little impact as possible; it's going to be more jobs, more opportunity, more spending here in America, even the EU deal he just announced, that’s a huge investment, which means they're going to build things here for an American market; that's huge. That's really significant. Every time you create one of those good manufacturing jobs, that's a middle class family that's making it and doesn't have to worry at the end of the month that they're going to get their lights turned off or not. That's why these jobs are so important. The way he's going about it is a little bit up and down. That's his style for negotiating. And it got us Japan, it just got us the EU it got us a framework for China. My argument is, let him go at it. Let's, get this done.

Washington Reporter:

During your first stint in Congress, obviously you were the Chair of the House Intel Committee. Have you been tracking what DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been putting out about Obama doctoring intelligence reports during the transition of 2016?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

Yes.

Washington Reporter:

What's your perspective on that?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

To me, this is something we all should worry about, and Democrats as well. If the government can do what they're suggesting that Obama and his team, I think Brennan was one of the big cheerleaders of this, did to a guy who’s very wealthy and running to be president, what can they do to you? I worry about this a lot, that people aren't paying attention to it for what it is, and it is as serious as you get. I won't say treason, because I don't know if they worked for a foreign government. I will say high crimes and misdemeanors for sure. They're going to have to prove it, and I'm looking forward to seeing the information. But when you use the intelligence services and the FBI for a political purpose against an opponent, my Lord, that is exactly why we you know, we have our country as it stands today. That is exactly what our Founders said they didn't want to have happen. They didn't want the king to have all of this power to do what they did and tear apart people's lives because they wanted to. I'm very, very worried about what they did, and I can't really wait to see the evidence on this. And people need to understand how bad that is and how dangerous it is.

Washington Reporter:

Looking at Trump's foreign policy agenda here, top countries that come to mind for me are Iran, China, Israel and Ukraine. How do you think he's doing there?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

I always say that America needs to be engaged in the world, but not entangled. I'll use Iran as the greatest example, very targeted, very surgical, huge outcome for safety and security of the United States and our allies, including Israel, and really even our Arab League partners, if they want to admit it or not. That strike was America engaged in the world, you're stopping something pretty awful, but you're not sending tanks over the border. You're not sending the 101st Airborne Division in. That, to me, is the engaged policy that the U.S. needs. We need to look toward the east. Our biggest growing threat is China. It is this axis that China has formed with Russia, Iran, and North Korea that's going to pose real security risks for the United States. And we need to make sure that we're addressing it in a way that gets ahead of it. What you don't want to do is have to react to something bad happening in the world. We want to get ahead of it. And does that mean that you would say we want to arm to Taiwan so they can defend themselves? Yes. Does it mean you want to have permanent stations of troops in Taiwan? I don't think that's the right answer. That's entangled. We don't need to be entangled. We need to be engaged.

Washington Reporter:

We recently had Crypto Week. What's your perspective on where this industry is going? Obviously, they just passed some serious legislation, the GENIUS Act and things like that, on a bipartisan basis. Where do you want to see it go from here?

Rep. Mike Rogers:

I think that we want the innovation on crypto. We want the mining. We want blockchain created here. It is really, really important for us to make sure that the future of crypto is driven by the United States. This is not something that you want China to lead the way on, or Russia to lead the way on, or Iran to lead the way on. And listen, as a law enforcement guy, having some sense of regulatory form is really important. So this is good. This was good for the industry. Gives them certainty, allows those investments to happen here, and it's going to change. Who knew crypto was a thing 10 years ago? When I first was exposed to it, I said, ‘if we don't do this right, this is going to be a haven for criminal activity.’ And what I saw happen is, can we get together? Can we make an agreement that will foster innovation, will foster the blockchain? Oh, and by the way, can we keep it here? And I think the answer is yes. I think the GENIUS Act went a long way to do that, and that's why I'm supportive of it.

Washington Reporter:

Congressman Rogers, thanks for your time as always.