Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Friday called for the immediate resignation of President Donald Trump, two days after his supporters stormed the Capitol building in a deadly riot as Congress gathered to certify President-elect Joe Biden‘s Electoral College win.
Murkowski is the first GOP member of the U.S. Senate to publicly call for Trump’s resignation.
“I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage,” Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News. The senator cited not just the events of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, but a number of actions and inactions from the outgoing president.
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“I think he should leave. He said he’s not going to show up. He’s not going to appear at the 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,” she said, adding, “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 said she blamed the terroristic actions of the mob of Trump loyalists — who broke inside the Capitol and damaged government property — squarely on Trump.
“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,” said the senatior.
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“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 also said she even questions if there’s room for her in the Republican Party if it becomes the party of Trump.
“… if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me,” she said.
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