Alaska's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said the quiet part out loud, admitting that she and her GOP colleagues "are all afraid."
"We are all afraid," she said on stage at The Foraker Group's annual leadership summit in Anchorage, after someone in the audience had asked if there was fear of Trump 2.0 in the Republican party. "It's quite a statement, but we are in a time and place where…I certainly have not been here before."
"And I'll tell you, I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real," the lawmaker confided, referring to Donald Trump's thuggish and vindictive attacks on anyone who even questions his lawless ways. "And that's not right."
Murkowski then told the people in her state that, although afraid, she was "going to use my voice to the best of my ability…I've got to figure out how I can do my best to help the many who are so anxious and so afraid." (See video below, posted by The Bulwark.)
From Mediaite:
Murkowski went on to criticize what she called an "unlawful" approach to implementing service cuts and recounted her staff's constant scramble to confirm and mitigate rumors of abrupt changes.
"It is as hard as anything I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I've been in the Senate," she said.
Her list of concerns touched on federal cuts to USAID but also policies that could impact Alaskans directly, including changes to Medicaid cuts and tariffs that could gut Alaska's commercial fishing industry.
"This is going to be a very, very different state," she predicted.
Previously: Romney fears Trump's revenge — "How am I going to protect 25 grandkids?"
