This story was originally published on Reporting from Alaska, by Dermot Cole.
While Sen. Dan Sullivan stood in a room with other obsequious Republican senators, competing to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces, Sen. Lisa Murkowski found something better to do — have lunch with friends.
“I haven’t gotten any cards saying we wish you were there,” Murkowski told reporters, the Washington Post said.
The Post said that for the previous two days she had faced no substantial questions from reporters, just people asking about Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts of violating this New York state law about falsifying business records.
The constant questions about Trump brought bad flashbacks of his time as president for her, the Post report said.
“So it’s like, once again, it’s all about Trump all the time,” Murkowski told the Post.
“All of a sudden everything else stops,” she said Wednesday, “because they all want to know: Are you going to lunch, what do you think he’s going to say, what are your expectations?”
The Post said she let out a deep breath. “Oh my God,” she said.
Sullivan and other Republicans applauded long and hard for Trump and stood behind him when he emerged to speak to the cameras. The senators smiled as they listened to him lie about several things, including the rate of inflation and the condition of the economy.
He said that the United States has never had the rate of inflation it now has in its entire history. He said that large numbers of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. are coming from prisons, mental institutions and are terrorists.
Meanwhile, Sullivan attached his name to this chain letter from Sen. Rand Paul that attacks the judicial system in the United States and makes numerous false or exaggerated claims about Trump’s 34 felony convictions.
The letter claims that Trump was mistreated and his conviction by a jury is “nothing short of the evisceration of the American judicial process.” Trump is being persecuted, they claim.
They did not question whether Trump paid hush money to cover up an affair with a porn star and then created false records to disguise the hush money payments to save his campaign in 2016.
“We condemn this show trial, not just because it marks the attempt to imprison a leader of the loyal opposition, but because it threatens the existence of due process of law, without which a constitutional republic dedicated to the protection of individual liberty is not possible,” Sullivan and 28 other Republican senators claimed.
The allegations against Trump were contained in this 13-page statement of facts and in this 15-page indictment. Sullivan should read them.
Dermot Cole has worked as a newspaper reporter, columnist and author in Alaska for more than 40 years. Support his work here.