Mike Rogers is a former Republican congressman from Michigan who left the House, ran for the Senate and lost, and was running again in 2026.[1][2] Kiriakou believes he chaired the House intelligence committee but flags his own uncertainty rather than asserting it: “I believe he was the chairman of the House intelligence committee. I may be wrong on that.”[1] The 2024 race he narrowly lost was to Elissa Slotkin, whom Kiriakou identifies as “a former CIA colleague of mine.”[3] On the 2026 primary, Rogers polls well against Abdul El-Sayed and less well against Haley Stevens.[2]
The Trojan horse advertisement
Rogers released an advertisement using generated imagery that called El-Sayed a Trojan horse — “not for Islam but for communism.”[2][4] Kiriakou’s verdict is that “that ad counts on Michigan voters being morons,” and his objection is definitional: he has “a hard time believing that so many Republicans are so stupid as to not know that there’s a difference between communism, socialism, and democratic socialism.”[4][5] To many Republicans, he argues, “anything that is not Republican” is communism — but Bernie Sanders “is not a communist. He’s a socialist, a democratic socialist, which really is capitalism light,” meaning a robust social safety net.[5][6] His conclusion about the advertisement’s premise is unsparing: “Mike Rogers is hoping people are stupid or reactionary.”[7]