LISTEN: Mo Brooks: Rep. Mike Rogers personally warned Mitch McConnell of consequences of his Luther Strange strategy

Monday in an appearance on Birmingham’s Talk 99.5 “Matt & Aunie Show,” Rep. Mo Brooks offered listeners an update on his status following the prostate cancer surgery he underwent last week.

Brooks seemed upbeat about his progress. He was asked by hosts Matt Murphy and Andrea Lindenberg about how difficult 2017 had been given the shooting at a congressional baseball practice in June, his failed bid for U.S. Senate that unfolded throughout the year and then his prostate cancer diagnosis.

While laying those difficulties out, Brooks took aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for his involvement in the primary.

“They still don’t get it,” Brooks said. “They don’t understand that they’re the ones who lost this Senate race. But for their intimidation tactics, [State] Sen. Del Marsh would have run. But for their intimidation tactics, Trip Pittman, the senator from the Mobile Bay area may have been able to get more funding and run a better campaign. Same with me. We had a number of candidates who would have easily have won in the special election of last Tuesday probably by 20 or more points. But for whatever reason, the strategy implemented by Mitch McConnell resulted in a runoff between two people who gave us the greatest challenge to win the general election with. And you know, we are where we are. And it’s because of Mitch McConnell. They had this script, and they didn’t do any independent thinking.”

He went on to reveal Rep. Mike Rogers had warned McConnell before the campaign about the possibilities of making the eventual GOP nominee vulnerable to a Democrat.

“I’ll give you an example – Congressman Mike Rogers met with Mitch McConnell and told him that if he persisted in this plan, he was about to unfold, that the result would be a runoff between Luther Strange and Roy Moore. Roy Moore would be our nominee. And because of some public hesitancy with some of the positions that Roy Moore has taken over the years – that would be a real dogfight in the general election. And that’s a congressman who has been highly successful in the state of Alabama. You would think that Mitch McConnell would give that some weight. But Mitch McConnell just totally disregarded it. Same thing with the insight that I tried to share with the senators. They just could not conceive that the incumbent had some major weaknesses that would make vulnerable not only in a runoff, even with $30 million pumped down to try to help him – not only make him vulnerable in a runoff, but also make him an underdog in a general election against someone like Doug Jones.”

Yellowhammer News reached out to Rogers’ Washington, D.C. office but it did not offer an on-the-record comment about Brooks’ claim of the meeting between Rogers and McConnell.

Rogers endorsed Brooks for the Republican nomination during the GOP primary.

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