How a one-time GOP critic found alliance with Trump in pivotal Michigan Senate race

The day after January 6, 2021, Mike Rogers was blunt.

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. Nearly four years later, as Rogers now battles Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin for a prized Senate seat in Michigan, Rogers and Trump are in a much different place, a relationship solidified over phone calls that led to Trump’s crucial primary endorsement of Rogers earlier this year. “Well, I didn’t say he was clearly responsible” for January 6, Rogers told CNN last week at a diner in his old House district northwest of Detroit. “Listen, even Donald Trump said I was tough, but fair. I’ll take that all day long.” While Rogers said he wasn’t walking away from his past remarks, he downplayed them.