Mike Rogers discusses contentious Senate race at Detroit business luncheon

Good afternoon, everyone. How are you? I know you're doing better than that. I know the bread that you ate is setting in, so you may be a little tired. How are you doing today? All right. Listen, put your hands together for our candidates who are here today. I'm going to introduce Mike Rogers in a second here, but Garland Gilchrist, Mike Rogers. I know John James is here as well. These are our guys and Jocelyn Benson, a woman who put a lot at stake. They sacrificed everything in their lives to run for office for hopefully making a better day for all of us tomorrow in America. So together, a warm Caldean American, warm welcome to all the candidates running for office. Of course, they can hear us on the stream and here in person. Put your hands together for all of them. I am deeply honored to be a part of this wonderful community. As Martin said, I grew up, I'm a hometown kid, grew up in Troy, watching Channels 2, 4, and 7. Glad to have landed at Channel 2. We love what we do there. We do a nightly political show called The Pulse every single night. We believe that you've got to ask important questions, tough questions, and you've got to do it, and sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, and that's still okay. But you deserve the answers to all the questions that we ask. I'm also very pleased to introduce someone who, without doubt, can be said is someone who's served this country in great ways, both as a veteran but also as a seven-term congressman. That's 14 years that he and his family gave up, essentially, to travel between Washington and Michigan, and doing the work of the people. Obviously, that's a sacrifice in itself, whether you agree with someone's politics or not. It is a tremendous sacrifice. 14 years, and now he's going for it again because he believes that his way of running this country as a senator is the right way. That will be up for you to decide and the people on the other side of those cameras. And so it is my distinct pleasure to introduce you today and sit down with U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Put your hands together for Mike. Did you choose that walk-on music? or was that your staff? I had no idea. You had no idea. I was thinking baby shark. Yeah, right, right. Well, welcome to the Chaldean Chamber Luncheon and I'm glad to be sitting down with you here today. These are some important days ahead. We've got, what, two and a half weeks left? This is, as you know, who am I telling, the most consequential Senate race in the country. You served for 14 years and then there was a break and now you're back. You're coming back at this time. Why now? So, and I went out and got into the cybersecurity business. I thought after 14 years, if you stay there in Washington too long, it makes your head a little mushy. So my wife and I said, hey, it's time for us to pass the baton and go out and see if I can start some businesses in cybersecurity, which thankfully, and we're blessed, we're successful in doing that. And then we just looked at our state. We're in some trouble here. So we've had a quarter century of two Democrats in the United States Senate. In the last eight years, Democrats have controlled Lansing. We've lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs. The average new homeowner now is 40 years old in the state. Our education system went from top tier. We're now 46th in the country. We've lost the defense industrial base capability that we used to have even 20 years ago is gone. I mean, we used to build ships and planes and tanks. All of that's gone. It still happens in the United States, just doesn't happen here. And so when we looked at that and said, you know, we can do something about this. And I just don't and refuse to believe we have to accept the managed decline of the state of Michigan. Too many people who have come here and made their lives here, invested in businesses here. They deserve, I think, a climate that allows them to be successful. And then we can stop our kids and grandkids walking into our houses saying, we can't stay here in Michigan. We've got to go somewhere else. We can change that, but we're going to have to get busy. I don't think we have a lot of time. So my wife and I decided we're going to get in the fight and we're going to get these things fixed. And boy, it has been a fight, wouldn't you say? I mean, this fight between you and Abdullah al-Sayed has been talked about across the world, across the country. There's a geopolitical weight, of course, that weighs heavily on this race as well, as you know. But the tone of this campaign, you know, I was talking to some members earlier today, Mike, and former congressman, and they said, man, if you could just ask them what both of these guys can do to even in the last two and a half weeks reset the tone and focus back on us. And then just yesterday you had the vice president of the United States call your opponent a weasel. And I would say, and I'll say it on the record, embarrassingly he called him a weasel, And then embarrassingly, Abdullah al-Sayed responds with an F-bomb, expletive-laced response, calling him, I'm a wolverine, you're a Buckeye. I mean, at some point, there are 13- and 14-year-olds watching this race. Do they deserve better, Mike? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Politics is mean and nasty, and I've never seen it so divisive as it is today, which is unfortunate. And you think about why the vice president got into all of that. You know, he insulted the guy's wife. That turned into this mud-slinging fight. It was pretty embarrassing all the way around, if you ask me. And you don't condone that at all. I don't condone that. You don't hear me attacking anyone personally. I just, I won't do it. And so, yeah, I wish politics were better. You know, unfortunately, so much of these ads that you see are, they're not done by the campaigns. They're done by outside of the campaigns, of which you're not even legally allowed to know or participate in the making or the direction of those ads. And so that's why you see all of this level of negativity and nastiness flying around. I would love to be able to talk about the things that we're going to do on education. I have a plan to get our fourth graders reading. You know, in Michigan last year, two-thirds, think of this, two-thirds of our fourth graders cannot read in the fourth grade. If you can't read in the fourth grade, you have a 70% chance of going to prison or being on welfare. Seventy. I mean, if we don't stop and let that sink in for a minute, if we don't fix this, we are going to have huge problems. I have a way to do that. For the last decade or so, my wife and I have been involved in a program called Beyond Basics. They go into schools. They do reading assessments. They can get kids reading at grade level six to 14 weeks, and the average is about six weeks. Fundamentally changes their life. If you ever want to have a tear-jerking event, you go to one of these graduation ceremonies, where these kids read aloud for the first time for the crowd. Unbelievable. Yeah, we're 45 in the country right now, not a good number to be. And this governor's race, obviously, is focusing on education. They have the purse strings, and they have their hands on the education system here. A lot that has to happen, and yes, at the Senate level as well. Back to the tone, and then we'll move on to other, again, substantive issues. But I think it's important to note that, you know, the elephant in the room, obviously, is that these jabs back and forth have been leaving people going, wait, what's true and what's not, right? Because you talk about the political action committees and their ads, but also we've heard you several times point to the Muslim Brotherhood and point to your opponent. And Bridge Detroit came out with kind of a fact check on that and said, wait a minute here, you can't draw a direct line between Abdul El-Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood. You talk about his half-sister, his biological mom who didn't raise him. yet here we are talking about all these things and we're not talking about the things that matter to people right now do you do you think that you should be producing more facts maybe about these these alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that you've made these allegations about well we have all of the facts i would just wish the press would do their work and investigate the facts we have volumes of it and the only where are you getting the data from sir well all over you can do your own open source resource and find out that the only candidate that the Muslim Brotherhood celebrated after their victory was Abdul El-Sayed. His college association was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. His father is the president of the Council of American-Israeli Relations that has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. You don't have to get too far down this. And listen, I don't care how you pray. Matter of fact, I wore the uniform of the United States of America so everybody can pray exactly the way they want to pray. I do think that your ideology and the way you think matters. And if you have those thoughts and you have that ideology, I think that's probably important for people to know. You're going to send somebody to the United States Senate that likely can't get a security clearance. That's a problem. And he says he wants to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee. How do you deal with that if you have these connections and you're that open? Remember, this is the same guy that won't condemn the IRGC, a terrorist organization that's killed U.S. troops. This is the same guy that equates Israel and Hamas, and this is the same. The moral equivalent of a terrorist organization versus the IDF. I mean, so it's voluminous. My point is, nobody's talking about it. I think they should, so that we can get on who's the best one to go back and actually put people in a room to work collaboratively on education. Title I money for reading reclamation, I can do it. Housing, I think I can do it. We've had great conversations with folks here in the city of Detroit about what we can do collaboratively to help on the housing issue here. None of that is happening on the other team. No, and you're not hearing a lot about it because instead we're hearing about these attacks. And, again, you know, we have sorted out some of what you're talking about and looked closely at the data, haven't found a direct connection. But in the two-and-a-half weeks we have left. You have not looked hard enough, or you're just looking and you don't want to find it? It is right there. I'm going to give you the stack. Give me the stack. I want to see the stack. Two-and-a-half weeks left, former congressman, two-and-a-half weeks left, and there are people going, all right, if we focus on policy, Maybe there's a strategist out there who probably may be in your staff's ears saying, look, if you focus on policy instead of all these other things, maybe it would actually hit the jugular. Are you thinking in the next two and a half weeks to go, hey, let's go exclusively on policy here? Because if you can hit him on policy, he is far left of center, and you are more conservative. And so if you contrast that instead of contrasting the cultural stuff and some of these allegations, perhaps it would hit the people's pocketbooks more, yes? Well, when you, and this is a great point, and I think you're going to hear these conversations, the Green New Deal that he supports, and AOC, who just transferred him a million dollars today, also supports, and Bernie Sanders, who's in campaigning, supports, will raise the average utility rate $2,000 per household. $2,000, by the way, raises your gas tax or your gas cost about $0.20 a gallon because that is the drive to get to this 100% renewables in less than 10 years. It is so outrageously expensive. People can't afford it. I think they're doing it on the wrong end. Listen, I'm an all of the above energy kind of guy, but you can't mandate these costs on working families in the state. And so we hope to have that conversation. We'd love to have that conversation because I have a different way of getting better rates, cheaper utility rates, and more job opportunities here in the state. They think that just that Green New Deal affecting Michigan would cost us 90,000 jobs. Remember, in the last eight years, we've lost 27,000 manufacturing jobs, 27,000, which is why our median wage is now below the national average. I draw a direct line to the manufacturing jobs we lost. We're going to have to have somebody that understands the importance of those jobs and employment and how we get them back, especially defense and industrial base work. And so, yeah, I want to have those conversations about energy costs and gas costs, you bet, and regulatory burdens on small businesses. And I know many people here are involved in small businesses, which are the backbone of the state. About half the employment doesn't come from big companies, it comes from small businesses. We have to make sure that they're competitive. And one thing I say on manufacturing, people aren't going to open up the book and say, well, two-thirds of their fourth graders can't read. I can't wait to locate my business there. Sure. If we don't get that fixed, we are in real trouble. I have a plan to fix it. I want to ask the crowd with a show of hands, how many of you are concerned about the tariff war that continues? Raise your hand if you're concerned about the tariff war right now. Not taking sides, just concerned. And concerned doesn't mean that you're taking a side. It means I wonder about it. You have, just in the last couple of weeks, have said pretty strongly that you believe that it's time to end this trade war with Canada. I know you said you talked with some folks at the White House. If you could talk to the president, and I don't know if he's coming to town or not, I believe he is, will you have that conversation with President Trump about Canada? What will you say? Yeah, already have. I just think that there are tariffs that Canada is imposing that make it unfair for American businesses, especially in things like dairy and other things. They are brutal to our dairy farmers here. So there are things I would like to see fixed. And my argument is the overall sweep of those tariffs didn't account for how integrated we are in our automobile industry here. So that's the conversation I've been having with the Secretary of Commerce, him himself and his team about, hey, you might need to re-look at this. You know, the Jeep Cherokee goes across the bridge to Canada about 16 times before it gets on a lot, right? That's how integrated we are in production and all of that. So that's something that I don't think they factored, so I'm going to try to fix it. So I look at it this way. If it's bad for Michigan, I'm going to be against it. If it's good for Michigan, I'm going to be for it. So that some of the tariffs have brought back reshoring here. And think about the Chevy Silverado was built in Mexico. Guess what? It's coming back to Michigan. It's going to the Orion plant because of the tariff fight that they had. And that is undoing years of bad, I think, trade policy. And that's about a $2 billion investment in Michigan. And that means the small suppliers are also getting more work. And we've met them. Detroit Diesel adding a third shift. They haven't had a third shift in, I don't know, two decades. And so there's positives and there's negatives. And you want somebody, I think, that can go and actually have the conversation. If you have somebody that's angry and divisive and insulting and wants to put his own Democrat's head on a pike or ogre on a pike or whatever he said, you know, he uses this violent and angry language, guess what? You're not going to find three people in a room that want to work with you. The United States Senate, you have to be able to work with people in order to get things done. And why not send the guy that can at least go into the administration and say, you know, this isn't working for Michigan. We've got to change it. Well, I find this interesting because you're talking about the statesman part of you, the parts that served for 14 years. You've been in the rooms where it happens. You know how things work. You're going to be one of 99 people if you get the job, and you've got to get the job done. But the question will be asked again, and it's not a gotcha, Mike, but I do want to ask you, why, I mean, we saw that obviously if you put these really severe tariffs on Canada, out. It's going to affect us here in Detroit. Yes, the Detroit diesel, the Silverado, those are all because of tariff work that's been done. Good tool in the tool chest. But Canada? Like, what are we doing here? I mean, did you notice that right away? Why did it take weeks and weeks for you to come out and finally say that? Well, I was, because I was picking up the phone, right? There's sometimes you run to the press, and sometimes you pick up the phone and call the folks and say, hey, we need to either A, understand what you're trying to accomplish, and there are tariffs. It's really important to know, Canada has not exactly been great to us on certain tariffs. It's been an uneven trade sheet. We know that. It's been an uneven trade sheet. But the sweeping bit of trade, I think, has been harmful overall. So once we got to where they wanted to go, where it was, then I felt comfortable coming out saying, hey, we have to fix this. And that would mean that if I'm a United States senator, I get in the car and drive over and see the administration and say, we've got to get this fixed up. I was sitting here not long ago, and you were in the audience over there, President Trump was up on this stage, and he pointed you out in the crowd and he said, this is going to be our next U.S. Senator. It's very clear that President Trump is not only a fan of yours, he's a supporter who has basically said, hey, he has my undivided support right now. What is it that you have in you, the gumption, to be able to look at the President in the eye, if he says or does something that you disagree with, and say, Mr. President, this is wrong? Well, I just did it with Iran, with the Canadian tariff. You told him? Well, I've told his people, when I get the opportunity, I will. As the president told me when he endorsed me, he said, you know, Rogers, not everything you've said I like. But you're tough, but fair. I don't know what more you could expect from a member of the United States Senate. I have a state to represent. He's going to be there two years. I've got some things I would love to do for this state that we're going to need the administration to be able to have some cooperation, defense industrial-based work back. I'm going to need the administration's cooperation. Getting Title I money on phonics-based reading reclamation for our kids between third and fourth grade, I'm going to need some help from the administration. And so what I'm trying to do is say, when it's wrong, I'll tell them. I've already came out publicly and said it. Believe me, we hear it when they don't like things. They're not very shy about telling you. But I'm not very shy about talking about it. thinking, listen, I'm an army officer. I was a street agent with the FBI. I kicked in doors at gangsters and fugitives and all of that. And probably the most qualifying is I'm the youngest of five boys. There is not one thing you can do to me that hasn't been done by my four older brothers. So I'm ready to go. I have an older brother myself. I know what it's been to be knocked around a bit. I do want to ask you about, we have a large crowd of Chaldeans, obviously, that are here, Chaldean Americans. We have roots in Iraq. They've been disappointed. And I talked to them, and they said, look, I wish more was done for the Christian minority that is suffering and persecuted right now in Iraq. If you become U.S. Senator, what would you do substantively to help the people there and make a difference? So it's not – it's Iraq, definitely. And I have great relationships across the Chaldean community, of which we've had lots of conversations about those kinds of things. sometimes just showing up and trying to work through those problems i think unfortunately now that we have no u.s presence there it's going to get a little more difficult i hate to say it i hope that's wrong i hope i'm wrong about that uh but what we can do is you know the other part of that is showing up let them understand that the United States is concerned about the Christian community there and we're seeing something kind of ugly around that whole uh you know that not only the Middle East, but Africa as well. Huge attacks on Christians across. Well, thousands of people killed, thousands of Christians just wandered on the streets. Hundreds of thousands of people because they're Christians. Yeah. And so I think we have a lot of work to do on this to make sure that those of the Christian faith are protected around the world. Iraq happens to be important because we have such good relationships here. And the Chaldeans are such an important part of our community, faith, family, freedom. And so what we're going to do is make sure that all the levers that we have available to us, we're going to use. I don't care if it's sanctions to something different, but I'm not afraid to go show up either and start having some hard conversations in Iraq. Again, I worry that they think that we've walked away from Iraq. I don't think that's the right thing to do for the United States. I want to be engaged in the world, not entangled in the world, but we do need to protect our Christian brothers and sisters around the world. Speaking of the war, the Iran war, you came out, I talked to you in Grand Rapids after the debate that you did, and we chatted a bit about it, and you essentially said that, you know, it's time for this war to end. How do you end a war when you still, I think there are at times upwards of 30 to 60 percent of their nuclear capability is still there. They're vowing to continue the fight. Are we in an endless war here? Do you really believe there's light at the end of this tunnel? So I do. I'm not sure where you're saying 60 percent. I think that's an Iranian figure. So I happen to be one of House Chairman Dr. Paul Schaeble, who's an intelligence officer who served under Clinton and Bush, reported that to us just last week, saying that they could be closer to 60 percent. And again, it changes, right? I mean, depending on what they decimate. I was the chairman of the House, so we spent a lot of time on this issue. There's three parts to an Iranian nuclear program, well, any nuclear program. Missiles, enrichment, and then the hardest part, believe it or not, is shaping that material to put on top of a missile. So when it hits, it explodes. That part's the hardest part. So in 2014, when I left Congress, they had all three components of the program. So the big conversation back then was, how long would it take them to put it together? And they built a massive supercomputer. So when we were developing nuclear weapons here in the United States, you had to have a test to see if it worked. Nowadays, with supercomputers, you really don't have to have a physical test to see if it works, which, as you can imagine, kind of hurries up your research, if you will, to get to a device that will go off. And so they had that then. I can only imagine I don't have access to classified information today. But something happened. I do believe that they were close to marrying those programs. That was, what, over a decade ago? They didn't stop? I do think they set it back longer than having them 60% of it. If you can disable their supercomputer, that's huge, because they're not getting the components to build it. If you can disable their ability to enrich uranium, and by the way, it's 0 to 20, really hard to do. 20 to weapons grade is where it gets easy. So we know they crossed 20%, all of that. So I say that only to say, I do believe we've set it back. I do believe the Army, Navy, and their Air Force is so decimated, it can't cause trouble to their neighbors, which they like to do. And so could you end this thing, put them back on the containment strategy, and continue to make sure that they don't have the capability or resources to rebuild? Last question. We only have about a minute left, But I do want to ask you about the tone and the mood of the next debate that's happening in Detroit. The last debate, I was watching. It was exhausting. I'm a kid who grew up in Michigan. You should try being in it. Well, listen, I understand. That was exhausting. But if it was exhausting for you, imagine having to listen to this in your living room at home going, man, which one of these guys am I going to elect? For those who are on the fence, a small number of people on the fence, but for those who are on the fence, should they expect to see you differently in the next debate? Well, I hope so. I hope we have a chance to talk about issues. That would be fantastic. I think our platform is what Michigan needs to get us back up to the national envy status. Are you going to lean into that more and less on the personal? If I'm given the opportunity. He's a very aggressive debater. He likes to interrupt. It's all trained. It's that Oxford training. Got it. I'm just a guy that worked on cars on a shop floor to put my way through college, but I think I'll hang in there. we listen i would love to be able to talk about what we're trying to do i mean the three things that he's been running around the state i think telling everybody all three have been debunked already um you know from everything from his corporate money that he takes and to the billionaires that he goes with the fact that Medicare for all means you lose your personal health care your private health care five million Michigan families will lose their private health care which by the way has swelled the ranks of UAW for Rogers. They understand what's at stake. All of the things that he's been saying just aren't true. Would I love to have debate the issues on all of those things? Man, you bet. Just that Green New Deal alone would likely just absolutely drive the automobile industry out of the state of Michigan. I just don't think we can afford that. And I don't think we can risk his ideology. If we can talk about those things in the debate, I'm happy to do it. Well, let's hope that we can. Mike Rogers, glad we finally got a chance to sit down. Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Mike Rogers, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.