A Republican Senate candidate’s favorite story about the economy under President Donald Trump has a problem, and it involves the main character.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the GOP nominee in Michigan’s Senate race, has told the same tale of a manufacturer adding a second shift at least 31 times since May 2025, but the details keep changing, according to an analysis and video supercut by The Bulwark published Thursday.
The earliest version Bulwark reporter Joe Perticone tracked down came during a local radio interview that month. “I talked to a guy who is putting on a second shift for the first time in 25 years because automobile companies are trying to reshore here in the United States,” Rogers said then. “That’s a win, that’s a win for Michigan.”
Over time, the encounter kept getting fresher. Speaking with local radio host Kevin Dietz in July 2026, well over a year after first sharing it, Rogers recounted talking to “a small factory the other day” that had brought on a second shift for the first time in 25 years.
The guy himself also shifts. In an October 2025 interview with conservative commentator Scott Jennings, Rogers spoke of multiple “guys” adding shifts. Other times he described a single owner of “a small little tool-and-die shop,” and in another telling, “kind of a medium-sized metal fabricator.”
The Bulwark noted Rogers has used the anecdote to back Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which he has championed throughout his campaign, though he recently broke with the president over levies on Canada. The Bulwark pointed out that spending on new manufacturing construction has dropped during Trump’s second term and cited Chicago Federal Reserve research showing scant evidence that the tariffs lifted factory hiring in the short run.
A Rogers campaign spokesperson didn’t answer The Bulwark’s request for comment. Michigan voters will pick a successor to retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters on Tuesday.
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