A Trump-backed Senate candidate got caught on a leaked recording laying out his Election Day plan for a deeply Democratic city.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who is running for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat, can be heard in audio posted by the Michigan Democratic Party on Saturday pitching the idea of stationing police officers as Republican poll watchers in Detroit.
"Let's put retired or off-duty police officers as our poll watchers in Detroit," Rogers says in the clip. "Go ahead, try to intimidate them. Please."
The state party, which shared the recording on X, said Rogers "wants to intimidate voters this time around" and accused him of falsely claiming his election was stolen. Rogers narrowly lost his 2024 Senate bid to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.
"If we're going to do this again, I don't want to wake up at 3, you know, go to bed at 2 a.m. a winner, and wake up at 4 a.m. a loser," Rogers said in the audio. "I'm kind of done with that."
Detroit has been a target for Trump allies before. In 2020, Republican challengers crowded the city's absentee ballot counting center and banged on windows as Trump pushed false claims of fraud in the majority-Black city.
The clip quickly drew fire from Tim Miller, a former Republican operative and host of The Bulwark podcast, who argued Rogers has been miscast in Washington as a mainstream conservative.
"DC pundits act like Rogers is a Romney Republican when he's really the worst of all worlds a corrupt, Iran war cheerleading, MAGA conspiracist," Miller wrote on X.
Miller went further, predicting how Rogers would respond to a Trump power grab.
"If Trump tries to stay in power in 29 Rogers will be telling his boat buddies it's better than muslim socialism," Miller wrote, referring to the GOP's attacks against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed. "A despicable figure."