Let me tell you what I can see with my own eyes.
Mike Rogers, Republican running for Senate in Michigan, posted a video this week about Capt. David Nadeau, a Monroe firefighter who drove to Ground Zero on September 11 and now has cancer. “Nobody deserves this,” Rogers wrote. Real touching stuff. Good lighting, sincere tone, the whole nine yards.
Here’s what Rogers didn’t post a video about: the two times he voted against giving David Nadeau and people like him medical care.
In 2010, when Congress tried to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, legislation specifically designed to provide health services to first responders sickened by the toxic air at Ground Zero, Rogers stood up in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and said the real victim here was the federal budget. “By making this a new mandatory program, you jeopardize the financial health of the United States of America,” he said. Then he voted no. Twice. The bill passed anyway, 268-160, because enough people in that building remembered what heroism looks like.
The World Trade Center Health Program, the one Rogers said would bankrupt the country, cost $4.2 billion over ten years and served nearly 155,000 responders and survivors. That’s the price tag for taking care of the people who ran into burning buildings for the rest of us. Rogers’ campaign declined to comment when asked about it. Bless their hearts. They must have been busy.
Now here’s where I have questions for the manager. Rogers hasn’t said a peep about the $37.5 billion and counting that President Trump’s war in Iran has cost taxpayers since February. Thirty-seven and a half billion for that, but four billion for the firefighters with cancer was just too steep? That’s not fiscal conservatism. That’s choosing who matters and who doesn’t, and then pretending you didn’t.
Photo by Shawn Moore/OSHA News Photo (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsBut the hypocrisy tour doesn’t stop there. The day after Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, Rogers put out a statement saying he never thought he’d be “running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.” Strong words. The kind of thing that makes you clutch your pearls.
Except it’s a lie. FactCheck.org looked into it and concluded Rogers’ claim is flat false. The “America deserved 9/11” comment came from Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed, said it on a livestream in 2019, then retracted and apologized. El-Sayed said plainly, on Fox News, “Of course I don’t think 9/11 was justified.” He called Piker’s remark “a dumb statement” on Meet the Press. He said “America didn’t deserve 9/11” in plain English, more than once.
Rogers’ campaign knows this. They were told this. They put the claim out anyway. His spokesperson called Piker the “unofficial spokesman” for El-Sayed’s campaign, which is also not true, and then said any attempt to correct the record was “incredibly disrespectful to the thousands of Americans who lost their lives that day.” So now pointing out that someone is lying is disrespectful to 9/11 victims. That’s a neat trick. I’ll remember that next time I’m at the customer service desk.
Rogers also accused El-Sayed of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood with no evidence and went on Fox News to claim the man wanted to eliminate “our fireworks, football, the Fourth of July.” El-Sayed had raised concerns about fireworks injuring veterans with PTSD. That’s it. That became “he’s coming for your football.” I’m not making this up. You can look it up yourself.
I’m a simple woman with simple standards. If you say you support first responders, support them when it costs you something. If you say someone believes something terrible, you’d better have proof. And if you’re going to wrap yourself in the flag and the memory of 9/11, maybe don’t do it with a voting record that says you’d rather let the heroes get sick than spend the money.
Mike Rogers owes Capt. David Nadeau an apology. He owes the voters the truth. And he owes the families of 9/11 more than a campaign ad.