Mike Rogers has demanded that Detroit’s mayor call the president and beg him to send in the National Guard to quell the city’s dystopian crime rate, which should at the very least allow the Tigers and Lions to continue playing home games.
Rogers, who once hailed from Livingston County and now either lives in a $1.7 million home in Florida or a more modest White Lake residence, is for the second time in three years running for the U.S. Senate, which explains the otherwise odd choice to claim White Lake Township as his residence.
Also odd is his sudden concern for the welfare of mostly Black and Democratic residents of the state’s largest city. For 20 years in the state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, their existence, much less well-being, never appeared to cross his Republican mind, even though violent crime, including murders, was about twice as frequent as it is today.
An easy and correct conclusion is that he wants to make sure that no one – especially MAGA voters — doubts that he has completely renounced any semblance of principles and has gone full-throated lapdog on behalf of a president who dreams of becoming a dictator when he’s not fantasizing about the sexual allure of his daughter. Both are Trumpian facts; you can look it up.
You can also look up (relax, I’ve done it for you) the results of Rogers’s narrow 2024 Senate race loss to Elissa Slotkin. Those figures perhaps show why he is acting like a Republican who fears an attack to his right in a primary even though he is running unopposed for the GOP nomination.
Rogers isn’t afraid that MAGA voters will abandon him in a primary. He’s worried they will shun him – again – in November. Because that’s what happened last time.
In 2020, when Trump carried Michigan rather easily, the same voters elected Slotkin by a margin of about 18,000 votes (out of more than five million). There weren’t a bunch of Trump voters who also thought a Democrat would be the right choice for the Senate. Rather, a sizable chunk of Trump voters – recalling the days when Rogers openly criticized their hero — either skipped the Senate race or voted for a third-party candidate.
The numbers bear it out. Slotkin received more than 2.7 million votes, almost exactly as many as Kamala Harris. But while Trump polled more than 2.8 million votes, Rogers didn’t even crack 2.7 million, falling 123,000 votes shy of his party’s standard-bearer. Had he captured even half of those votes, Rogers would have easily won the race.
MAGA voters had a right to be suspicious. There was a day when the smooth-talking Rogers openly slammed Trump. He said his actions were unseemly for a former president, he scoffed at the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, he decried the January 6 attempt to overthrow the Constitution, and he once described Trump as “more gangster than presidential.”
Once it became clear that Trump was rising like a TACO-flavored phoenix, Rogers – who has learned as well as anyone how to make a fortune from elected office connections – changed his tune. Trump, who loves to see former critics grovel, eventually welcomed him into the fold. But MAGA voters still have reservations, which cost Rogers dearly in 2024.
It should be no surprise, then, that Rogers now accuses unnamed political opponents of being “soft on crime,” reviving a long-tested trope that doubles as a dog whistle for those who understand that crime means urban crime, and urban crime means dangerous Black men.
And yet, Rogers parcels out a pixel of truth when he accuses Democrats of being satisfied with murder rates that are too high, just not as high as they used to be. He’s got a point. Scurrying to their accustomed defensive postures, many Democrats have relied on the fact that murders have declined significantly in Washington, Chicago, and Detroit, which are all cities that Trump dismisses as murderous hellholes.
That misses the point that the number of murders in this nation, while falling, is too high and should be a national concern – not just when Trump needs a diversion.
In Detroit, for example, murders last year totaled 203, a huge drop from the previous year, which in itself was the lowest number in decades, and less than half the murders in a typical year when Rogers was an elected but silent (on this issue) official. But it still means that on average a person was murdered every other day in Detroit. Put another way, there would need to be a killing in Livingston County every week in order to have a murder rate that approaches Detroit’s.
Two hundred killings a year is nothing to celebrate. And, despite posts from Rogers, no one is. Last year, when murders dropped from about 300 to about 250, Detroit Police Chief James White specifically said, “We’re not patting ourselves on the back. I think we all agree it is entirely too violent in our communities.”
In his race to demonize the city, Rogers didn’t mention that. Nor did he mention the numerous steps the city is taking to address violent crime, including directing federal and local resources at high-crime neighborhoods. These programs, such as ShotStoppers and One Detroit, have been successful. If there was still real journalism in Detroit, someone might ask Rogers what he thinks of those programs, or if he’s even heard of them.
But it’s easier to post a story from one of his prepared statements. Rogers, ever savvy, knows and relies on this.
