Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, once the lone Republican vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, is reportedly “disturbed” by how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is handling Donald Trump’s impeachment.
McConnell, to the surprise of absolutely no one except apparently Lisa Murkowski, said he’ll be in “total coordination” with the White House on planning the Senate’s impeachment trial. This seems like a pretty blatant overstep of the Constitutional separation of powers, but also par for the course for McConnell, who loves Trump because he lets McConnell do whatever the fuck he wants. Murkowski doesn’t like it.
“In fairness, when I heard that I was disturbed,” she told CNN affiliate KTUU on Wednesday, noting that the Senate and White House should not be working together on impeachment when the head of the White House is getting impeached (no shit). “To me it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense, and so I heard what leader McConnell had said, I happened to think that that has further confused the process.”
There’s been some discussion as to whether or not this might mean Murkowski will break with her party and vote for impeachment—as the New York Times notes, when she’s spoken out against Republican leadership in the past, she’s tended to vote against them as well. That happened with the Kavanaugh confirmation as well as with the 2017 vote on Trumpcare, where Murkowski voted against her party and ultimately helped save the Affordable Care Act.
Still, it’s not really clear where Murkowski stands on impeachment. She also told KTUU she thought Nancy Pelosi rushed the House impeachment process, and that she wanted a “full and fair process”, which in this circus is like standing directly in front of a speeding train and asking it to stop. I guess we’ll see, but don’t go adding Murkowski to your MSNBC 2020 Calendar of Stars yet or anything.