Mike Rogers has his Democrat opponent for Michigan’s open Senate seat on the back foot, he explained on Breitbart News Saturday to host Matt Boyle.
Rogers. the Republican nominee, blistered Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for driving automotive jobs out of Michigan and lying so blatantly about him in her campaign ads that PolitiFact labeled them “false.”
Former Congressman Rogers expects more lying from Slotkin as his momentum builds.
“I think they’re going to continue to do it,” he told Boyle. “It’s an ‘I was never the border czar’ kind of lie, right?”
In Slotkin’s lie in question, Rogers says, “She was accusing me of working for a Chinese company,” which he and PolitiFact say he never did.
But Slotkin’s choice of attack is ironic, given her work to boost Chinese electric vehicle (EV) jobs at working Michiganders’ expense.
“She signed a nondisclosure agreement to help a Chinese company come to Michigan and build batteries, or assemble batteries…up in the middle of the most pristine horse and farm country, in the middle of the state, hugely disruptive, and the whole process was dishonest,” Rogers detailed. “She signed a non-disclosure as an elected official – an elected official! – to help put the deal together so that they could get state funding.”
“Remember, this is a company that came out and said, ‘Yeah, we’re associated with the Communist Party in China,’” he added.
Rogers argued the billion-dollar package Slotkin and other politicians negotiated for the Chinese company is “going to China, and it’s also hurting UAW jobs, auto worker jobs right here in Michigan.”
He said Slotkin is relying on lies to distract from her own “dangerous” record.
“Now you know why they do it,” he said. “So they’re going to come out on all the things that they’re worried about, and they’re trying to attack us before we were going to get our legs on. The good news is we’ve been fighting back in the way that we can, with social media, with digital ads. You know, we’re not putting up with it. We’re fighting back.”
Slotkin has portrayed herself as a non-partisan national security expert, citing her work in the intelligence community for Republican and Democratic presidents. But Rogers doesn’t see it.
“I mean, she’s dangerous, is what she is. She’s absolutely dangerous,” he continued. “She was wrong on Iran. She’s wrong on China. To say she’s a national security expert is – I just can’t get there.”
Rogers hammered Slotkin again for signing a non-disclosure agreement as part of a group organizing state funding for the Chinese company.
“First of all, you should never do that as a public official. I’m sorry, nothing you do should be nondisclosable unless you’re dealing with national security information on behalf of the government, which is different. She didn’t do that,” he explained. “This is a commercial enterprise going to get money from the state, and it is problematic because she signed that because she didn’t want to talk about the details about the company, about the details of the deal, how much money they got. And they are ramming it down the throat of this community who doesn’t want it.”
Rogers described the repercussions for local politicians who negotiated the unpopular, harmful deal.
“It did generate an army of grassroots activists,” he said. “They overthrew the township board that was — that had okayed it, then they overturned the county board that okayed it. I mean, it was pretty inspiring, like this still shows you that you can stand up and be counted.”
Slotkin must share information protected by the NDA, Rogers said.
“You’re a public official. You can’t hide under the desk like that. And why would you think giving cash to a company affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party is ever a good idea?”
Rogers said, “It all starts with this EV mandate,” arguing the harm to Michigan workers perpetrated by mandates from Washington. He and Boyle discussed Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in the mandates as well as Slotkin’s votes harming automobile manufacturing jobs in Michigan.
“She also voted against preventing the EPA from banning gas engines,” Rogers said. “And by the way, with 1.1 million people [working automotive jobs], I mean that … alone should be a disqualifier.”
Slotkin’s voting record is more in line with California than Michigan, Rogers said.
“If she wants to represent California, my argument is go represent California. Good riddance.”
Workers are beginning to realize what her record is and its harm to the state, he asserted.
“Auto Workers are starting to wake up to this notion, because they realize that some government agent is going to show up at their house, take their gas stove or gas water heater, put it the back of their F-150 and drive it off,” he said. “They’re not down for that.”
Boyle blasted Slotkin for presenting a false moderate image of herself to voters, as if she would be less radical once elevated to the Senate.
“But if you look at her voting record, as we just laid out there, she’s voted 100% of the time with them,” Boyle said. “She has never once broken with them, not on one thing, so on everything from siccing the IRS agents on people to these radical mandates to the border policy. Never once has she ever, ever, ever broken with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. She is their person through and through, and there’s no reason to believe that she would change if she got to the Senate.”
Rogers agreed. “She does a great job getting around saying, ‘I’m the moderate. I worked in a White House with two different presidents.’ That would be like me saying as a Special Agent with the FBI, I worked for Bill Clinton and George Bush,” he said. Well, no, no, I was an FBI agent working, battling organized crime in Chicago, or I was a military officer under Ronald Reagan, and therefore I worked for Ronald Reagan. I mean, it’s really quite ludicrous that she had a staff job – that was important, don’t get me wrong – but some notion that she had some special relationship that would go beyond what normal people would do when they get those jobs is absolutely nonsense.”
Slotkin will be freed to move further to the left in the Senate when not constrained by an election every two years, he argued.
“She’s very much a political cicada,” he said. “She gets very moderate, right in the election year – ‘I’m for you. I’m for everybody’ – and then when the election’s over, you don’t see her. And guess what? She moves way to the left. I wouldn’t give her a promotion. She doesn’t deserve it. And if you look at her issues, really bad for Michigan, her grocery prices, our gas prices, our energy prices — I mean, we are getting killed here, and that’s all of the policies you don’t join Biden and Harris to implement.”
Rogers praised the energy within the Republican Party, put on display at the state GOP’s convention over the weekend, which he attended.
“People were fired up. They know what’s at stake,” he said. “And it wasn’t about vibes and joy. It was about we need to protect our country and move it forward in a way that protects the next generation of Americans for having access to be your own person, do your own thing in your own way, and that opportunity to do better in your life — that ability is all at risk.”
Rogers said his candidacy is attracting broad support, and that voters not typically targeted by Republicans will power him to victory.
“People who were coming up were saying, ‘I’m not really a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, but I cannot vote Democrat this year — we are getting killed,’” he said. “And then they talk about their grocery prices, they talk about their gas prices, they talk about housing and how their kids can’t – there’s no way their kids are going to be able to buy a house. Even the car prices… went up from like $38,000 on average to something like $47,000.”
With Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, Rogers believes Republicans will carry the state.
“They’re coming up, grabbing a Trump sign, grabbing a Rogers sign, walking down the midway very proudly saying, ‘I’m voting for these guys come November,’” he said. “That is hard to pick up in polls, because these folks would not be on anyone’s list.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.