I spent my career in the FBI. There I learned to sit across from a man. The eyes move before the mouth. The details harden where they should soften. Meanwhile, the timeline bends to fit whichever room the subject stands in. I have interrogated men who lied with more discipline than Mike Rogers. Indeed, Rogers has shown that lack of discipline across seven months of this campaign. Most of them kept one version straight for an afternoon. Rogers, however, cannot keep one straight for a news cycle. Yet he wants Michigan to hand him a Senate seat. That seat would rest on a résumé he has inflated for years. It would also rest on Trump’s war, which he sold for months. Ultimately, he discovered somewhere in a grocery aisle that the war had become expensive.
I do not accuse Rogers of any other label his defenders reach for to dodge the case. Instead, I accuse him of cheerleading an illegal war on Iran. Furthermore, I accuse him of pretending his conversion was about Michigan families. In truth, that conversion was about his own polling numbers. Ordinary politics, you say. No. Rogers chaired the House Intelligence Committee.
The Man Who Called an Illegal War “Probably Long Overdue”
Hear the words in Rogers’ own voice on the illegal war on Iran. The words are the case. He did not treat this war as a difficult necessity to endure with restraint. He called it “probably long overdue”. On CNN contributor Scott Jennings’ radio show, he made a claim. He called it “the best opportunity for peace in the Middle East I think I’ve ever seen in my lifetime”. Rogers shamelessly posted on X about Iran, saying Iran represented “an imminent threat to our country”. He added that Iran “must not have a nuclear weapon”. I have read the transcripts. I have watched the clips. What strikes me is not the hawkishness. Hawks exist, and they may make their case. What strikes me is the certainty. No hedging in March. No hedging in April.
A man with a national security résumé spoke. He told Republican primary voters exactly what they wanted to hear. He used a committee chairmanship, and made an unauthorized war sound like a triumph of statecraft.
A former Intelligence chairman says a war is necessary. Low-information voters reasonably assume he has seen something they have not. He had not. He saw the same polling as everyone else. He saw the same briefings. He amplified the version that served his ambition.
“It Shouldn’t Be a Date”—The Blank Check He Signed in Public
Watch what Rogers did when the easy part ended and the war kept going. In March, people asked how long the illegal war on Iran would last. He urged patience: “It shouldn’t be a date,” he said. “It should be conditional”. By May 31, he told a local television interviewer the conflict was “a win-win-win for us”. As late as July 31, CBS Detroit asked a question. Should Congress authorize the president to continue the war? It asked that question if the war dragged on. Rogers said he had no problem doing so: “I don’t mind giving the president authority to continue,” he said. “You can’t stop in mid-negotiation”.
I have watched agents risk their careers to tell a supervisor that the evidence did not support the operation. Rogers looked at the same gap. It was the gap between the evidence and the sales pitch. Rogers chose the sales pitch as the better career move. He did not merely support this war. He served as one of its most useful salesmen.
The Grocery Aisle Conversion
Then the cost hit home. Gasoline in Michigan averaged $4.49 a gallon by mid-October. That was up $1.87 from a year earlier. Similarly, diesel hit $6.88 on September 22. That was an 86% jump from the $3.69 it had been a year before. The Strait of Hormuz closed at the start of the war. As a direct result, the fertilizer and fuel spikes followed. This is precisely what happens when you start a war you never should have fought. In practice, the other side discovers it holds a choke point. For months, Rogers watched that happen. He watched while defending the illegal war on Iran. Then, in late September, he walked into a grocery store. Accordingly, Rogers wore a zippered vest—same vest, same chain, same staging as his 2024 grocery-cart ad. There he announced that “the war with Iran needs to end and end quickly”.
He blamed the war on Iran for the prices. It was clean, well-produced political salvage. It might have worked if he had let it stand for more than twenty-four hours. Yet he did not. The very next day he went on Newsmax. He said the Trump administration had done “a wonderful job” in the Iran war. On the one hand, he wanted the war to end quickly on Monday. By Tuesday, however, the man running the war was wonderful. Instead, he praised the very war he had just condemned.
“We’ll Find Out”—Three Words That Tell You Everything
On October 14, NBC’s Tom Llamas asked Rogers directly whether the illegal war on Iran was a mistake. In response, Rogers offered three words. Indeed, I have heard those words from a hundred suspects. Those suspects wanted to see which way the case headed. Specifically, they wanted to see that before committing to a story. Ultimately, the words were: “We’ll find out”.
Rogers is not on trial. Nevertheless, he asks for a promotion. Moreover, he cannot tell Michigan voters something. Was the central act of the administration he wants to serve in a mistake? He cannot say. Clearly, the answer depends on a poll he has not seen yet. In short, that is not caution. Rather, that is calculation wearing caution’s coat. A man cannot answer a yes-or-no question about an illegal war. This is, after all, three weeks before an election. Therefore, that man has already answered it. In other words, he simply hopes nobody noticed the answer.
“So, Which Is It?”—The Anchor Who Asked the Question Michigan Should Ask
Martha MacCallum did what no Michigan voter should have needed a Fox News anchor to do. On October 6, she laid Rogers’ own record in front of him. Initially, he called Iran an “imminent threat” on February 28. Subsequently, he said the war “needs to end to bring costs down”. Even earlier, he said “let’s get this done, and let’s get it done right.” Then she asked the only question that matters: “So, which is it?” Thereupon Rogers answered, “Well, all of those things are true”.
I have heard that answer before. In fact, it is the answer of a man who has decided consistency is a luxury he cannot afford. Notably, at the October 9 debate in Grand Rapids he tried to have it both ways. In a single breath he agreed the war “needs to come to an end”. Meanwhile, he claimed the strikes set Iran’s uranium enrichment program back by “twenty years”. At the same time, he wants credit for winning it. To put it another way, he wants it both ways.
Furthermore, he wants to be the peace candidate in the grocery store. Conversely, he wants to be the strength candidate on Newsmax. Abdul El-Sayed put it more bluntly than I would have. Nevertheless, he was not wrong. Indeed, his words ring true. “The reason he’s flip-flopping has nothing to do with policy, has nothing to do with your costs. Has everything to do with his sagging poll numbers”.
The Résumé He Built on a Photograph
Here is the part that galls me most. I say it as a man who spent years in the same building. Rogers claims that building as his moral home. Rogers has spent this campaign invoking the bin Laden raid. He invokes the counterterrorism years and uses it as proof that he is the serious man in the race.
A Metro Times review published this month found something. It found that he has repeatedly embellished that record. He claimed he was “there” at the bin Laden raid. He wrote in a fundraising email that he “saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with my own eyes”. What he saw was only a photograph.
Former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox put it as flatly as anyone can. Rogers “tells all these stories about being an FBI agent, and he was in the FBI for two years. Like he was J. Edgar Hoover”. I will not pretend every former agent is a saint. I will not pretend two years is nothing. But a man inflates a two-year Bureau stint into a lifetime of derring-do. That man tells you exactly how he treats evidence
The Tape Michigan Cannot Unhear
And then there is the audio. In newly unearthed recordings from a January radio interview, Rogers mocked the very voters he now claims to fight for. “They [Democrats] say, ‘Trump caused high prices’—people go nuts, they lose their mind,” Rogers said. “I do believe there is this Trump derangement”. In separate leaked audio he sneered at grocery worries. He used the tone of a man who thinks he is the smartest person in the room: “Oh my gosh, coffee went up. You know, horror!”.
A millionaire Senate candidate, on tape, mocking Michigan families for worrying about the price of coffee. When reporters asked him to explain those comments, he belittled the question as “a couple of DNC talking points”. I have interviewed men who lied about money and interviewed men who lied about violence. I have interviewed men who lied about the worst things a person can do. The ones who frightened me most could not conceal their contempt for the people they asked to believe them. Rogers is not frightened. He is contemptuous. He believes Michigan voters are too stupid to notice the distance between the grocery-store vest and the radio-studio smirk.
The Record Always Wins
The polling, moreover, says he may be wrong about that. El-Sayed led 48.1 percent to 45 percent in the RealClearPolling average on October 12. He has led eleven of twelve Michigan polls since mid-September. By contrast, close races reward the candidate who can hold a story together for the final three weeks. Rogers cannot—not on the illegal war on Iran. He has told too many versions of this one to keep them straight. Consequently, every version sits on the record.
Consider that the grocery-store ad is on the record. The “toothless wonder” is on the record. The “win-win-win” is on the record. The “wonderful job” is on the record. The “we’ll find out” is on the record. The leaked audio is on the record. I spent years learning one lesson. The record is the only thing nobody can talk back. On November 3, Michigan reads it. I have seen men try to outrun their own record. I have never seen one succeed. Mike Rogers is about to find out the same thing. He will find it out the hard way. After all, the Bureau trained me to spot a liar. Mike Rogers has spent this entire campaign making it easy.