Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) openly admitted that she and her Republican colleagues were “all afraid” of “retaliation” from Donald Trump as she criticized what she called “unlawful” executive overreach and sweeping federal cuts.
Murkowski’s comments came during a 45-minute session at The Foraker Group’s annual leadership summit and stands as one of the starkest public admissions from a Republican yet of the political pressure facing those in the party who push back against Trump policy or rhetoric.
“We are all afraid,” Murkowski told the crowd on Monday.
Pausing, she added: “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Then step down and open up your spot to someone with a spine!!!
She’ll be replaced with more maga.
Didn’t they already try to do that with Murkowski and she won as a write in?
No, she was on the ballot with Kelly Chewbacca as the token MAGA candidate. Alaska has ranked choice, so the R ticket split, but people were able to list Murkowski as a backup to their D (or 3rd party) pick.
Ok, so Republicans tried to defeat her but Alaska’s election system stopped them. Seems like she’s in a uniquely secure position to be doing more.
I think it’d be more effective in the short term to show enthusiastic support for these kinds of admissions. Give these early defectors a soft landing. Politicians entirely operate in a perpetual popularity contest, where they’re always trying to do today what they think will make them popular tomorrow. Maybe Murkowski thinks she has a chance of maintaining that popularity and we should do what we can to validate that assumption. If she helps turn the tide, that’ll warrant some respect. After the worst threat has been neutralized, some deeper review of her history and scrutiny of how she intends to continue on as a politician is then worth deep consideration.
But I’ll take allies where I can. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The worst my enemy is, the better his enemies look to me.
The problem is these are Republicans were dealing with. Unless somebody on this site has a few million dollars to throw at them there’s nothing tangible we can offer them personally, and we wouldn’t have gotten here in the first place if they had any basic sense of right and wrong we could appeal to.
However, the good news is that we can honestly point out the very simple situation they’re obviously in, and if enough of us do that often enough reality might finally break through to them. The situation is that Donald Trump has a list of people he wants to hurt and they’re all definitely on it because they could threaten his power. Being nice to him might move their name down the list but it won’t get them off of it. The only way they can protect themselves is by taking Donald Trump’s power from him before he gets to them.
We don’t need Republicans to be good people to deal with this situation (which is good because they absolutely are not and haven’t been for decades and decades), we just need them to be slightly less stupid than they’re currently being.
If only his stupid fucking base would just disown him already…
I’ve never seen so many people so hopelessly infatuated with such an unattractive, inarticulate, uncharismatic slimeball. But…maybe that’s somehow his strength. Like, look everyone, even a fat ugly rough-talking slob can allegedly be rich and surrounded by allegedly beautiful women. That at least explains to me why he has classless dude appeal. Why any self respecting woman would like him is a mystery I’ll take to my grave.