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Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is wrestling with a decision over supporting her own party’s president, Donald Trump, in the November election, as Trump has threatened a military crackdown on protests in the U.S.
“ ‘I am struggling with it.’ ”
Murkowski told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday that she thought comments by former Defense Secretary James Mattis blasting Trump for trying to “divide” the U.S. “were true, and honest and necessary and overdue,” CNN and other media outlets reported.
See:Mattis breaks silence, harshly condemns Trump’s actions: ‘He tries to divide us.’
Violent demonstrations have sprung up across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed Floyd’s neck with his knee for nearly nine minutes. Trump threatened states that he would send troops to quell the protests, but appeared later to back off his threat.
Read:Trump appears to back away from sending military to quell protests.
Murkowski told reporters that she’d continue to work with Trump and his administration but noted that she’d struggled with supporting him for a long time.
The Alaska senator earned Trump’s ire back in July 2017 when she and Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins voted against a motion that would have allowed their Republican colleagues to advance legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Trump wrote on Twitter the following day that Murkowski “really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad!”
