'I Want Him Out': Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski Of Alaska Calls For Trump To Resign
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has become the first Republican senator to call on President Trump to resign in the wake of the deadly insurrection this week at the U.S. Capitol, according to a blistering interview with the Anchorage Daily News.
Murkowski joins a chorus of Democrats who have said Trump should step down, less than two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.
"I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage," Murkowski told the newspaper.
"I think he should leave. He said he's not going to show up," she continued. "He's not going to appear at the inauguration. He hasn't been focused on what is going on with COVID. 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. He doesn't want to stay there. He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego. He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don't think he's capable of doing a good thing."
Murkowski's comments are among the most scathing to come from within Trump's party in the days since violent, pro-Trump insurrectionists overtook the U.S. Capitol with the apparent goal of halting Congress' certification of Biden's White House victory.
Five people, including a Capitol Hill police officer, were killed in the ensuing bedlam.
Trump had earlier in the day addressed the mob from near the White House and encouraged them to walk to the Capitol during Congress' certification process.
"You'll never take back our country with weakness," he said to the crowd, many of whom carried Trump, Nazi and Confederate flags.
As rioters scaled the Capitol, smashed windows and infiltrated congressional offices, forcing lawmakers to evacuate to safety, Trump issued a video message to his supporters for them to leave the building, calling them "very special people" and telling him he loved them. On Thursday evening, he condemned the violence but did not acknowledge his role in it.
"I will attribute it to the president, who 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," Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News.
"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," she said.
Murkowski said she has begun to question her place within the Republican Party, and her allegiance to it will depend on how the party is able to move forward after Trump leaves office.
"If the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me." [Copyright 2021 NPR]
