Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski calls on Trump to resign, questions her future with GOP

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R, called on President Trump to resign Friday and questioned her future within the Republican Party. 

"I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage," Murkowski said in an interview, according to the Anchorage Daily News. 

"I think he should leave. He said he’s not going to show up. He’s not going to appear at the inauguration. He hasn’t been focused on what is going on with COVID," she said. "He’s either been golfing or he’s been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice president," she continued. "He needs to do the good thing, but I don’t think he’s capable of doing a good thing," she said.

Murkowski is the first Republican to call on Trump to resign, though Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said he might support articles of impeachment. and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Ill., has called for invocation of the 25th Amendment.

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The Alaska Republican said she would "sincerely question" her Republican status if the party continued to align itself with President Trump. Murkowski lost her Republican primary in 2010 to a Tea Party challenger. After the loss, she continued her campaign as a  write-in candidate, where her name had to be spelled correctly to count, and eventually won re-election.

"Well, you know, there’s a lot of people who actually thought that I did that in 2010, think that I became an independent," she said. "I didn’t have any reason to leave my party in 2010. I was a Republican who ran a write-in campaign and I was successful. But I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me." 

Murkowski first drew the disdain of the president when she, along with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., came out in opposition to filling the vacancy left by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than two months before the presidential election.

Murkowski said that while "there may have been many, many, many, many good Americans who came to Washington, D.C., because they felt strongly in support of this president," she said Trump’s refusal to accept the presidential results incited supporters to storm the Capitol. 

"I will attribute it to the president," she said. "Even after his vice president told him that morning, ‘I do not have the constitutional authority to do what you have asked me to do. I cannot do it. I have to protect and uphold the Constitution.’ Even after the vice president told President Trump that, he still told his supporters to fight. How are they supposed to take that? It’s an order from the president. And so that’s what they did. They came up and they fought and people were harmed, and injured and died," Murkowski said.

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Murkowski said she was disappointed Republicans lost the Senate majority  n Georgia, where this week Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock beat out Former Sen. David Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler. 

"I think that that was another area where I think you can look directly to President Trump. ... That was very, very, very unfortunate," she said.

After the Senate split 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris offering a tie-breaking vote, all eyes will be on moderate lawmakers like Murkowski, whose swing votes could sway policy, along with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. 

Murkowski said she’s in frequent communication with Manchin. 

"We’ve talked a lot. In fact, my 3 o’clock call is with Joe and with a bipartisan group of colleagues that are really concerned about where we are, and how we move forward," she said.

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"I think I am including myself as part of a group of members that wants to work to try to bring things together in the Senate and wants to try to get some business done," the senator continued. "And this is going to be a [Biden] administration where I’m going to be disagreeing with where they’re taking us on a lot of issues and policy, but I would like to think that we’re never going to question their fidelity to the oath of office."