Murkowski is one of seven Republicans who voted to condemn Trump in his second impeachment trial, but he is the only one in that cohort to face reelection next year.
Trump on Saturday declared that he would not endorse Murkowski “under any circumstances”.
“It misrepresents your state and your country even worse,” he said in a statement to POLITICO. “I don’t know where the other people will be next year, but I know where I will be – in Alaska, campaigning against a disloyal and very bad senator.”
The Republican Party is struggling internally to find the best way to proceed with Trump outside the White House, but still in charge of a fervent political base and an ardent desire to remain a force in Republican politics. The POLITICO Playbook reported on Saturday that Trump sent cease and desist letters to the RNC, NRSC and NRCC demanding that they stop using his name and image to raise funds without his permission, a not-so-subtle indication of his discontent with the party apparatus.
The attack on Murkowski came days after she voted to advance the appointment of Rep. Deb Haaland (DN.M.) to serve as secretary of the interior – the only Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to do so. Trump cited this move as a recent example of the need to install someone else in Murkowski’s seat.
Murkowski had been one of the few Republicans who periodically criticized Trump in public, a position that made him a frequent target of the former president.
Murkowski, who succeeded his father, Frank Murkowski, in the Senate, also proved to be a difficult person to be overthrown by the Republicans. She managed to win as a candidate after losing a Republican primary in 2010, and since then Alaska has switched to a ranking-based voting system that will pit candidates from all parties against each other in an open primary with the top four. -getters votes advancing for the general elections.
Barrasso also said he supported Wyoming MP Liz Cheney, who, like Murkowski, became one of Trump’s main targets after he broke with his party to challenge him earlier this year.
“I support her,” he said on Sunday, while observing “I totally disagree with her on the issue of impeachment.”
Cheney has already rejected an attempt by Republican members of the House aligned with Trump to remove her from her leadership post.