WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 27: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) speaks to reporters outside the Senate chamber following a luncheon for Republican members of the Senate January 27, 2015 in Washington, DC. Murkowski commented on U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to protect millions of acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Image: Getty)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, suggested that she might want to leave the Republican Party.
During an interview with CNN’s chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju on March 24, he asked her how Murkowski felt about Trump calling January 6 prisoners “hostages.”
“I don’t think that it can be defended,” she responded.
“What happened on January 6 was an effort by people who stormed the building in an effort to stop an election certification of an election,” she added. “It can’t be defended.”
“I wish that – that as Republicans, we had a – we had a nominee that I could get behind,” the Alaska senator stated. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”
“Are you considering being an independent at this point,” Raju then asked Murkowski.
“Oh, I think I’m very independent-minded,” she replied jokingly.
“Officially though,” Raju clarified. “Officially.”
“I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump,” Murkowski said.
“Yeah, you becoming an independent caucusing with the Republicans, is that something you’re open to,” Raju asked her.
“I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times,” she declared. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
She also stated that she would not vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Murkowski and another Trump critic Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) endorsed Nikki Haley before Super Tuesday, who dropped her bid after losing every primary contest aside from Vermont and Washington, D.C.
Prior to Haley ending her campaign, the Alaska senator told NBC News that she did not know how she would approach the presidential election if the former Republican presidential candidate dropped out. She also hinted that she was not the only one who was uncertain.
“Now our party is becoming known as a group of kind of extremist, populist over-the-top [people] where no one is taking us seriously anymore,” the senator said in July 2023.
“You have people who felt some allegiance to the party that are now really questioning, ‘Why am I [in the party?]'” she continued. “I think it’s going to get even more interesting as we move closer to the elections and we start going through some of these primary debates.”
“Is it going to be a situation of who can be more outlandish than the other?” she then asked.
Even though Murkowski did not vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, she was one of many GOP senators to acknowledge that his extortion scheme for Ukraine was wrong.
She was also one of the seven Senate Republicans to vote in favor of the former president’s impeachment in January in his second impeachment trial.
The other voters were Collins, Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska), Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) and Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana).
In March 2021, Trump vowed to take revenge on Murkowski by campaigning against her in the 2022 Alaska Senate race as she was the only senator up for reelection that year who voted for his impeachment.
Murkowski has a history as a maverick.
She ran as a write-in candidate and won re-election after failing to get the GOP nomination in 2016.
In 2013, Murkowski became the third Republican senator to support of same-sex marriage. She announced her position on this social issue during an interview with Anchorage NBC affiliate KTUU.
She also posted a statement on her website in which she explained her support, saying that she believes that giving people the right to marry who they love conveys family values.
She then mentioned that her position on same-sex marriage had been inspired in part by an interaction with a lesbian couple from Alaska. The pair, a military couple, are raising four adopted foster siblings as their own children.
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I live in Anchorage, I have since 2010. Our Senator Makowski has done very little for this state in Mt opinion. Unless it fills her warchest. We are one of the most diverse communities in America and Oil ritch, the only thing I see her do when in Washington is beg for attention, and clarification. Never once have I seen her actually inforce what the people ask her to do. I will vote to remove her, and anyone else like her, from office.