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There was an interesting and telling exchange recently between Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, and CNN’s Manu Raju.
In the hallway exchange, Murkowski expressed frustration that former President Donald Trump is her party’s presidential nominee.
“I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind,” she told Raju. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”
Murkowski was one of the handful of Republicans who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump recently has taken up the cause of publicly defending people convicted for storming the Capitol, calling them “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
When Raju pushed Murkowski about whether she might leave the Republican Party, she said this: “I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Now compare Murkowski’s frustration with Republicans with the comments of Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, the Trump-endorsed candidate for the Senate seat in Ohio.
Moreno won the Republican nomination in last week’s primary and he did so by aligning himself with Trump. Moreno’s campaign released a digital ad during the primary, for instance, in which he agreed with Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
These days Moreno wants to talk about other things.
“Oh my gosh, are we talking about that?” he told reporters on Capitol Hill who asked questions about the 2020 election. “We’ve had like three elections since then,” he said. (Actually,…
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