Former President Donald Trump vowed to campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, next year as she seeks reelection, calling her a “disloyal and very bad senator.”
“I will not be endorsing, under any circumstances, the failed candidate from the great State of Alaska, Lisa Murkowski,” Trump said in a statement to Politico.
“She represents her state badly and her country even worse,” he continued. “I do not know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be — in Alaska campaigning against a disloyal and very bad Senator.”
Trump cited Murkowski’s recent vote to confirm Deb Haaland, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior, as evidence of Murkowski’s poor performance.
Haaland faced Republican opposition during her confirmation hearing because of her past statements against fracking and pipelines, and in support of the radical Green New Deal.
“Her vote to advance radical left democrat Deb Haaland for Secretary of the Interior is yet another example of Murkowski not standing up for Alaska,” Trump said.
Murkowski also supported Democrats’ impeachment efforts against Trump.
Trump’s statement against Murkowski is the latest sign that the former president will play a prominent role in Republican elections over the next few years.
He vowed last month to support primary challengers against every single Republican he views as disloyal to his agenda, and Murkowski is likely just the first of many to come.
“Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership,” Trump said in a statement last month.
Congressional Republicans, however, are reluctant to back Trump’s primary efforts.
“Perhaps in more genteel times, a bunch of infighting and arguing wouldn’t do much damage. Truthfully, I enjoy bantering back and forth, and I have no interest in trying to quell intraparty policy dialogue and debates,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote in a memo to his colleagues last month. “But now is not the time for division and here’s why: For the first time in any of our lives, socialism has become the unabashed, governing policy of the Democrat Party.”
On Friday Trump sent letters to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, demanding they no longer use his name and likeness on without his consent.
For her part, Murkowski said she understood her vote to convict Trump in February would invite a primary challenge.
“I know that my actions, my vote may have political consequences. And I understand that. I absolutely understand that,” she said. “But I can’t be afraid of that.”
