Former President Donald Trump pledged to travel nearly 5,000 from his home in Florida to Alaska to campaign against Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2022, when she seeks reelection.
Murkowski, who has been in the Senate for nearly two decades, was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote last month to convict Trump in his impeachment trial.
“I will not be endorsing, under any circumstances, the failed candidate from the great State of Alaska, Lisa Murkowski. She represents her state badly and her country even worse. 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 said in a statement to The Hill.
Trump also blasted Murkowski for announcing that she will support President Joe Biden’s nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) to serve as Secretary of the Interior. “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 has battled Murkowski since 2018, when she declined to vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy.
“In his first endorsements since leaving office, Trump has mostly backed incumbent lawmakers who also enjoy establishment support,” the Hill reported. “However, he’s put sitting lawmakers on notice that he could also fight for their defeats if he believes they have been insufficiently supportive of him or his agenda — with his threat against Murkowski serving as a reminder that incumbency is no protection alone against a Trump challenge.”
“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.
While Trump had been mostly quiet since leaving office Jan. 20, he reemerged last week, sending out several statements.
In one statement, Trump sought to explain why the GOP lost two runoff elections in Georgia, thus losing control of the U.S. Senate.
“To set the record straight, there were two reasons the Senate races were lost in Georgia,” Trump said in a statement through his Save America group. “First, Republicans did not turn out to vote because they were so angry and disappointed with Georgia Republican leadership and Governor [Brian] Kemp for failing to stand up to Stacey Abrams and the disastrous Consent Decree that virtually eliminated signature verification requirements across the state (and much worse), and was not approved by the State Legislature as required by the Constitution – having a major impact on the result, a rigged election.
“Second, Senator Mitch McConnell’s refusal to go above $600 per person on the stimulus check payments when the two Democrat opponents were touting $2,000 per person in ad after ad. This latter point was used against our Senators and the $2,000 will be approved anyway by the Democrats who bought the Georgia election — and McConnell let them do it!”
This article has been corrected to note that Kavanaugh was nominated to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, not to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.