Most Republicans are in lockstep with Trump. But others are willing to voice their concerns.
And this GOP candidate called on Trump to do this very important thing.
Mike Rogers, a GOP Senate candidate in Michigan, did not mince words on a recent episode of Fox News’ The Story.
With American forces still engaged in the Iran conflict, Rogers declared the time has come to decide what success looks like and then get out.
“We can’t be there without an end date or an end to the regime, and I think the president needs to come out and make sure which is which. But if we’re not doing that, we need to start wrapping it down,” Rogers said.
He followed up with the same plain message: “I do think it’s time to start wrapping it up.”
Host Martha MacCallum pressed him on what looked like shifting positions.
She reminded viewers that on February 28, early in the fighting, Rogers had called Iran an imminent threat that “must not have a nuclear weapon.”
Later he talked about ending the war to ease costs on American families. Still earlier he had urged the country, per MacCallum, to “get this done and let’s get it done right.” Which stance, she asked, was the real one?
Rogers refused to treat those statements as contradictions.
“Well, all of those things are true,” he answered. The United States, he noted, has already crushed Iran’s nuclear program.
“Kudos to the United States military,” he said, adding that he once served as an Army officer and that his own son now serves as a Naval officer. America’s forces have also shattered Iran’s army, navy, and air force—exactly the goals the president set out at the start.
With those military goals met, Rogers argued, the open-ended presence no longer makes sense:
“My argument is, start wrapping it up. We can’t be there without an end date or an end to the regime, and I think the president needs to come out and make sure which is which. But if we’re not doing that, we need to start wrapping it down. … I do think it’s time to start wrapping it up. There are other things that we can do, other than the big military presence, and I think that we ought to shift gears and bring all that home and put us into an endstate of the –.”
MacCallum interjected to raise the price of gasoline, a daily burden for Michigan drivers and every working family watching the pump.
Rogers directed viewers to concrete steps already underway to bring those prices down.
He said the effort to lower gas prices is happening “while the president’s trying to bring this to an end, and I think that’s the right approach to do this.”
For voters who put America first, the message lands cleanly. The men and women in uniform delivered the results they were asked to deliver.
Continuing an indefinite deployment without a clear finish line—either the fall of the regime or a firm withdrawal date—serves neither the troops nor the taxpayers who fund the operation.
