Republican Senator May Ditch GOP Over Donald Trump: Report

A report from CNN emerged on Sunday detailing Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski's growing frustrations about former President Donald Trump's influence over the GOP, with the Alaska lawmaker not ruling out a possible departure from the party.

Murkowski is the senior U.S. senator from Alaska and was first voted into the office in 2002. Over the years, she has emerged as one of the more moderate Republicans in Congress, having sided with former President Barack Obama's legislative agenda most of the time, voted in favor of convicting Trump during his second impeachment trial, and opposed the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

In a piece published on Sunday, CNN spoke to Murkowski about her growing frustrations with the direction of the GOP and its continued support of Trump, who is the party's presumptive nominee for president in this year's election. The senator stressed that she will "absolutely" not be voting for Trump, lamenting that there is not a better option.

"I wish that as Republicans, we had...a nominee that I could get behind," she said. "I certainly can't get behind Donald Trump."

Murkowski added that she would not rule out leaving the Republican Party if it remained in thrall to Trump, though stopped short of making any firm commitments about whether she would become an independent or some other party affiliation.

"Oh, I think I'm very independent minded," she said. "I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump…I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let's just leave it at that."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email on Sunday morning for comment.

Murkowski declined to offer any endorsement of a Republican candidate for president until late in the primary cycle, opting to throw her support behind former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the last major candidate that remained in the race for the nomination before Trump became the presumptive nominee. Only a few days after Murkowski's endorsement, Haley dropped out of the race.

The Alaska senator has continued to speak critically of Trump and his recent rhetoric, telling CNN that his comments about Jewish people, in which he suggested that those who support the Democratic Party hate their religion, were "incredibly wrong" and "awful."

She also decried recent comments from an Ohio rally in which he called those who were arrested for participating in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot "unbelievable patriots" and "hostages."

"I don't think that it can be defended," Murkowski said. "What happened on January 6 was...an effort by people who stormed the building in an effort to stop an election certification of an election. It can't be defended."