Former congressman: Trump should reconsider running for president

Former Congressman Mike Rogers told Scripps News it may be time for former President Donald Trump to reconsider his position as a presidential candidate and focus on his legal woes.

This comes after Trump’s announcement that he expects to be arrested Tuesday for an alleged hush money payment.

"I think that the former president should deal with his legal issues. He could be a force for good in the country if he chose that path, and my argument is he might want to try to reconsider that position," Rogers said. 

The former chair of the House Intelligence Committee suggested Trump’s legal battles are preventing the nation from focusing on more important matters like the country’s issues with China. 

"All the chaos and the entanglement of all of this didn't work in '20, didn’t work in '22. My argument is if we care about the future of the country — and I don't think we have another four years to kind of fool around on this — we have got to get ourselves ready for this competition with China, which is already here, by the way," Rogers said.

From President Joe Biden expected to tighten investments in China, to the Chinese spy balloon incident, to military drills on both sides, tensions between the United States and China have been rising. U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan even sounded the alarm on a potential war with China in 2025.

"My argument is everything should be through the lens of what helps get America ready in '24 to '28 to compete with what the Chinese are using both economically and diplomatically and militarily to try to get the United States off the world stage — that's what our focus ought to be," said Rogers. 

He said an indictment doesn't help anyone going into this election, and that "it's time for America to move on."

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Rogers stands by a more solutions-based approach to tackling the nation’s problems, rather than what he called a "sugar high" in politics where candidates become popular, may garner more Twitter likes, but get distracted from the problems at hand.

Rogers teased his own potential run, saying if his ideologies continue to be well-received, he may run for president in 2024.

"People are encouraging me to kind of take this message into 2024: Let's be a hopeful, optimistic, solutions-oriented candidate that would be different than anything we're seeing," Rogers said. "Time will tell, but we're going to spend more time in those early primary states trying to get folks to understand: A. what our threats are, and B. that we have solutions, and if we pull together, we'll get them done."

While pointing to issues like inflation and the economy plaguing the nation, Rogers also noted low literacy rates in children as a national crisis.

If he were to run for president, Rogers said an announcement can be expected in late spring or early summer.