So far, President Trump’s choices to fill vacancies in his administration have been stellar. Unfortunately, President Trump learned the hard way what happens when trust and loyalty are not at the top of the list of qualifications for candidates he chooses to interact with him and members of his cabinet regularly.
Today marks the first day that Trump supporters find themselves scratching their heads over the potential selection of former US Rep. and FBI Special Agent Mike Rogers, who recently ran for US Senate in Michigan as a Republican, as the potential FBI Director. Although Trump won the state of Michigan after days of counting, the very unpopular former CIA Analyst and former US Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) was called the winner of the race by a very slim margin. Instead of questioning how it was possible that President Trump did so well in Michigan, yet he lost by a small margin after days of counting in a state with 9 days of early voting, Rogers conceded almost immediately, without even so much as a whimper.
In 2020, Rogers mocked President Trump for questioning the election results.
Did Rogers know something the rest of us didn’t? Is it possible that Trump had already discussed making Mike Rogers the next FBI director if he lost or did he simply not have the will to fight? Or would Rogers putting up a fight over the late-night ballot counting (again) in the same counties as in 2020 make him a hypocrite, considering how he trashed President Trump in a Detroit News op-ed only weeks after the highly controversial 2020 election?
From Rogers’ November 21, 2020, Detroit News op-ed:
President Donald Trump’s attempts to influence the electoral processes in Michigan, and elsewhere, is cause for both concern and alarm, and should be roundly rejected by both Democrats and Republicans alike. By attempting to use the trappings of the Oval Office to influence state officials, he is violating norms of behavior and setting a dangerous precedent for the future — not just here, but internationally. American democracy must be about more than one person or one party, and right now the president should honor the office by acting accordingly.
The president is certainly within his rights to contest results where he believes there may have been inaccuracies or impropriety, and there are legal mechanisms for doing so. These efforts are unlikely to deliver the results he believes they will. His victory in 2016 was much closer than his loss in 2020, and both votes were held fairly and with bipartisan observation. It is well past time that the president accepts that he lost and begin the peaceful and orderly transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden.
The reality for Trump is that he lost the election, and not just in Michigan. The 2020 election was perhaps the mostly closely watched in history.
That we were able to hold an election in the middle of a global pandemic is something worth celebrating — not even COVID-19 was able to disrupt our holding elections. Here, state and local officials should be receiving much deserved applause for organizing and conducting the vote, enabling our democracy, upholding the law and counting every ballot. These same state and local officials now need to carry out their duties and certify the people’s decision.
Rogers was considered for the top spot at the FBI by Trump in 2017, but another Trump-hating candidate took the coveted spot
This isn’t the first time Rogers has been considered for the top position at the FBI. In 2017, President Trump considered hiring Mike Rogers to replace the disgraced, fired FBI Director James Comey. Instead of choosing the anti-Trump Rogers, he chose Christopher Wray, another Trump-hater. At the time, Rogers was endorsed by the FBI Agents Association.
Here is a montage of clips, mostly taken from CNN, where Rogers was a national security contributor and host of CNN Original Series “Declassified.”
@realDonaldTrump
Is this the guy you interviewed for director of the FBI?MI didn’t want Mike Rogers to be our senate candidate, but you endorsed him anyhow.
Please don’t make the same mistake twice. @elonmusk @VivekGRamaswamy @TulsiGabbard @mattgaetz
h/t Sandy Pensler pic.twitter.com/Xui8GgtrMX
— PattyMI (@PattyLovesTruth) November 15, 2024
In response to a post on “X” by Zero Hedge announcing the interview between Trump and Rogers for the position of FBI Director, Sean Davis, CEO and founder of The Federalist, had some pretty harsh things to say about Mike Rogers:
Absolutely not. Mike Rogers is a CIA-owned, Deep State clown who could not care less about putting America First. He will stab Trump and all of his supporters in the back at the very first opportunity in order to push America Last neocon foreign policy.
Absolutely not. Mike Rogers is a CIA-owned, Deep State clown who could not care less about putting America First. He will stab Trump and all of his supporters in the back at the very first opportunity in order to push America Last neocon foreign policy. https://t.co/jDuJE5cU0g
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 8, 2024
Trump’s endorsement of Mike Rogers, MI candidate for the US Senate, faced backlash from MI voters, Senator Rand Paul, and others close to President Trump.
Senator Rand Paul was very vocal about President Trump’s endorsement of Mike Rogers for the US Senate in Michigan. Like Senator Paul, Trump’s decision to endorse the vocal anti-Trump Rogers stunned many Trump supporters in Michigan.
Donald Trump just endorsed the worst Deep State candidate this cycle. @MikeRogersForMI is a never Trumper, and a card carrying member of the spy state that seeks to destroy Trump.
You have to ask yourself who gives Trump this awful advice?
Who’s next, John Bolton? pic.twitter.com/TZXRYLtFv6
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 11, 2024
Roger Stone, who paid a heavy price for his support for President Trump and is arguably one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, had this to say about the possibility of Mike Rogers assuming the role of FBI Director under President Trump.
Former Michigan U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers was the chief apologist of the mass surveillance policies that allowed President Donald Trump to be spied upon and sabotaged by the unaccountable deep state bureaucrats in Washington D.C.
After losing a winnable Senate race earlier this month, Rogers is now angling to be Trump’s FBI Director and become the next Christopher Wray or Bill Barr, a fox in the hen house undermining President Trump’s America First agenda. Rogers has a long history of being an anti-Trumper and was making media appearances calling Trump dead in the water – and even entertaining an anti-Trump presidential run – as recently as last year.
“I don’t believe today as I’m sitting here that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024. Don’t believe it… He may actually stay in for awhile. I just don’t think I believe he will be [the nominee]. His troubles are mounting, his fundraising is waning,” Rogers said during an April 2023 interview with CBS News.
In Nov. 2022, Rogers received a fawning profile in the Washington Post when he was testing the waters for a Presidential run. Rogers said that “Trump’s time has passed” and called Trump’s movement “clearly destructive,” only to change his tune after it became clear that Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, and the rest of the anti-Trump clown crew failed abysmally to dethrone the Don.
Rogers also told a group of Oakland County, Mich. Republicans in May 2023 that he supports the open-ended probe of election fraud protesters who were assaulted by Capitol Police and led into a federally-orchestrated display of violence on Jan. 6.
“When you assault a police officer, you are a criminal. When you break a window to get into a place you are not authorized to be in, you are a criminal,” Rogers said, defending the murderous actions of Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police thug who murdered Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt in cold blood.
As Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rogers attempted to stonewall the investigation into Benghazi, claiming that Obama’s CIA officials were telling the truth and did not need to be investigated. This drew the attention of Judicial Watch, and they discovered that Rogers’ wife Kristi ran a major security contractor in the private sector where her husband’s clout in the D.C. swamp helped her firm, Aegis Defense Services, win many lucrative government contracts.
Aegis was one of the defense firms that profited from Obama’s regime-change war in Libya, which turned out to be as much of a disaster as any of his George W. Bush’s failed wars. As “quintessential Washington insiders,” according to Judicial Watch, Kristi Rogers served as President and CEO of Aegis while Mike Rogers chaired the House Intelligence Committee – a glaring conflict of interest as Aegis tallied Pentagon contracts worth hundreds of millions.
Even CNN weighed in on the hypocrisy of the former CNN host Mike Rogers after he appeared to blame Trump for any January 6 violence:
The day after January 6, 2021, Mike Rogers was blunt.
The former Republican congressman blamed then-President Donald Trump’s “chaotic leadership style” for costing his party two critical Senate seats in Georgia. He said that “the spell” around Trump had been broken by the US Capitol attack, which, he said, Trump’s actions “clearly” provoked. And in discussing a news report a week later saying that Trump privately acknowledged some responsibility for the attack, Rogers made his own view crystal clear.
“Well, you’re damn right you had responsibility for this,” Rogers said of Trump on January 12, 2021.
Could part of the reason Republicans in Michigan didn’t seem to be overly bothered by Rogers’ loss in the senate race is that they never trusted him and his loyalty to Trump in the first place? Or could it be that Michigan voters didn’t want to elect anyone with deep ties to a government agency they believe is headed up by deeply corrupt individuals who are in bed with dirty Democrats and Trump-hating Republicans—the same agency Trump is reportedly talking to Rogers about leading?
