WASHINGTON — President Trump is undermining his own legislative agenda by working to oust two Republican senators, Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Tuesday.
“Maybe he doesn't think he needs us,” she said. “But I don't know. Last I checked,
the laws don't just appear before his desk to be signed.”
Trump’s actions to take down incumbent Republicans may ultimately get him a Senate that is more fiercely loyal to him. But new senators won’t be sworn in until next year. In the meantime, Murkowski said, Trump has to work with the Senate he’s got.
And that now includes two senators with less reason than ever to do his bidding.
One Republican the president doomed — Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost his Louisiana primary Saturday to a Trump-endorsed challenger — is already showing more independence.
Cassidy voted Tuesday to advance a resolution to end the war with Iran, despite voting the opposite when the measure came up before. Murkowski said that was Cassidy registering “his perspective that he doesn't feel bound to be there to support the administration's position” anymore.
Trump dropped a bombshell on Senate Republicans Tuesday by endorsing scandal-prone Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in that state’s GOP primary.
On top of that, Murkowski learned from a reporter that Vice President JD Vance had denigrated the incumbent, Sen. John Cornyn, at a White House briefing, suggesting he was beholden to corporate money. She was incensed.
“I mean, Paxton is a crook and a corrupt individual,” she told reporters. “John Cornyn, oh my goodness. In terms of an upstanding individual — a lawmaker, a former judge — I can't think of anybody who is just, again, more upstanding.”
No matter what happens in the Texas election, Cornyn and Cassidy will still be senators until January, voting on Trump’s bills, Murkowski said.
“The president may have just opened some opportunities for people,” Murkowski said.
New cracks are already showing in the Senate GOP’s loyalty to their president. Several Republicans, including Murkowski, expressed doubts this week about two of Trump’s pending proposals: $1 billion for security at his White House ballroom project, and a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate people he believes were wrongly prosecuted by the Biden administration.
“I'm calling it right now the litigation slush fund, because I am looking for more parameters to it, to really understand how it might be used in a beneficial and a fair way,” Murkowski said. “But I have a lot more questions than I have answers today.”
She, Cassidy and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine are the only remaining Republican senators of the seven who voted to convict Trump after his 2021 impeachment. Murkowski survived Trump’s attempt to oust her in 2022.
