Michigan's GOP nominee for Senate gently urged former President Donald Trump to focus on the everyday problems facing voters as leading Republicans worry his personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris are distracting from their attempts to define her.
The advice from Mike Rogers , offered to reporters during a Monday press call, came as Trump lobs controversial and headline-grabbing insults at Harris despite pleas that he keep his message focused to policy.
“The best way for us to win is to offer real-life solutions to people's real-life problems” on topics such as illegal immigration, crime, and inflation, Rogers said when asked about Trump's recent comments. “I always think that's the best focus for us because it impacts every single Michigan citizen."
Rogers, a former congressman who chaired the House Intelligence Committee, is facing Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) in a race for Michigan's open Senate seat that could determine control of the upper chamber and is likely to be affected by the top of the ticket. He and Trump have endorsed one another and appeared together at campaign rallies in the Great Lakes State.
At a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, Trump called Harris a “lunatic” and a “crazy person,” mocked her laugh, and told supporters he was “better looking than she is.” He has repeatedly questioned her intelligence and, earlier this month, stoked a dayslong news cycle when he falsely claimed she faked her black identity.
Trump made the case to reporters last week at a news conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that he’s “entitled to personal attacks” because he doesn’t “have a lot of respect for her.”
“I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible president. And I think it is very important that we win. And whether the personal attacks are good, bad — I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. 'He's weird,'" he said. "She's not smart.”
Rogers laid some blame on the media for what he described as a disproportionate focus on Trump’s negative and personal remarks.
“I think if you listen to the last couple of speeches of the president, 98% of it is about the economy, it’s about illegal immigration, it's about the cost of gas and energy and groceries,” Rogers said. “The problem, I guess, with today's media environment is the one thing that he does say that people don't like gets the most attention.”
Trump is set to visit Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday to talk about crime and public safety as part of a broader campaign blitz to battleground states across the country this week to counterprogram the Democratic National Convention, where Harris will formally accept her party’s nomination.
The trip has been criticized by the Harris campaign and Democrats for coming just a month after white supremacists rallied in the town, which has been associated with the Ku Klux Klan because of rallies the supremacy group staged there in the 1970s and 1980s.
Rogers rejected such criticism, saying the small group of racists who recently gathered there shouldn’t have claim over an entire town. He also highlighted the recent case of a 26-year-old who was in the United States illegally who pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct on a 15-year-old girl. The migrant, Alan Nievas-Garnica , faces 18 months to a maximum of 15 years in prison.
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Trump is set to speak at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office, the county where the crime took place.
“Some notion that that's tied to racism is absolute absurdity. A few racists that gather in any town in America shouldn't take that town,” Rogers said. “That's [Democrats'] default position. ‘Well, that must be racist,’ because they cannot talk about what they did not do when they were in power, and they want a second chance. So, I'm glad that Trump's here.”
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