The Republican Senator of Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, said her colleagues are afraid to speak against some of the actions of President Donald Trump and the key advisor Elon Musk because they believe they will be “demolished” and “primary.”
“You have everyone with agitation closure. Without saying a word, because they are afraid to be demolished, they will be primary, names will be given in the media,” Murkowski said, one of the few Republicans willing to publicly criticize some of the president’s actions so far in his second term, journalists on Tuesday in Alaska.
“You know what, we can’t be intimidated not to speak.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski speaks to press outside the Senate cameras, on February 20, 2025 in Washington.
Alex Wroblewski/EPA-EFE/Shuttersock
Both Trump and Musk have threatened with primary dissidents in the party. Recently, Trump threatened to lead the position against Republican representative Thomas Massie in the primary, after the congressman said he would not vote not in a continuous resolution backed by Trump to finance the government.
“It may be that Elon Musk decides that he will take the next one billion dollars that he earns out of Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowksi. And you know what. That can happen. But I’m not yielding a minute, an opportunity to try to defend Alaska,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Murkowski went to the Alaska Legislature, saying that it was “disturbed” by how the Trump administration is treating federal employees as part of the efforts led by musk to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
“I think each person in this chamber would agree that the federal government is too big,” he said. “I support the mission behind Dege. I understand it. We need to find efficiencies in the government.”
Elon Musk Boards Air Force One at the Andrews joint base in Maryland, on March 14, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
She said the reduction in the workforce makes “absolute sense”, but asked to be done “in the right way.” Murkowski said the administration approach “lacks the fundamental decency he needs with real people.”
“Public servants are not our enemies. They are our friends. They are our neighbors, they are an integral part of our economy and our ability to function as a state and a country, and their work could be little appreciated.”
He also said that the Trump administration was “testing the Court” by ignoring the order of a federal judge to stop two deportation flights of alleged gang members to El Salvador during the weekend.
“I do not think that any of us does not agree that when you have members of a really horrible gang that some horrible things have done and that they are not legally in this country, we do not want them here,” he said. “But even when we want to get them out of our country, there is a process, it is called due process. We follow our own rules here.”
“When the court orders are challenged, that weakens our courts. When people no longer believe that the justice system is there for them, what do we have in this country?”
Murkowski also touched foreign policy in his comments, pointing out the proximity of his native state to Russia and Canada.
President Donald Trump takes a question from a journalist before addressing Air Force One when he departs from the joint base of Andrews in Maryland, on March 14, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In Trump’s second term, he has imposed significant tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum and repeatedly expressed his desire to turn Canada into state 51. Trump’s movements have led Canadian boycots of the United States products, as well as protests.
“How we get to a place where we are fighting now with Canada and we are doing well with Russia, it is beyond me,” Murkowski said.
After the speech, Murkowski approached the criticism that he might not be doing enough to reject the Trump administration and argued that he has to “find places to work” with the president, whom the inhabitants of Alaska voted in November. The state of Reds -red voted for Trump in the presidential elections. 54.5% to 41% who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.
He also said he will not go back in his convictions, and said he will accept the consequences.
“I will not compromise my own integrity hiding from my words when I feel they need to be spoken,” he said. “I’m going to take the criticisms that come.”
“They criticize me for what I say, and then everyone else says: ‘Well, how does nobody say anything?’ Well, calculate, because they are looking at how many things they are throwing me and are thinking ‘maybe I will simply bend and cover’ “.
Murkowski, who voted to condemn Trump in his second political trial in 2021, also opposed the confirmation of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But he voted to confirm the other Trump nominees, including the director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Murkowski is ready for re -election in 2028.
