Donald Trump promotes Sarah Palin, trashes Lisa Murkowski in rare visit to Alaska

For­mer Oval Office occu­pant Don­ald Trump dropped an “f‑bomb,” went on a tan­gent about trans ath­letes, described Elon Musk as “anoth­er (exple­tive) artist”, said cli­mate dam­age will give us “a lit­tle more beach­front prop­er­ty”, and mouthed the word “garbage” to describe Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki, all in a nine­ty-minute Sat­ur­day ram­ble before 5,000 rap­tur­ous sup­port­ers in Anchorage.

Biden’s pre­de­ces­sor came to the 49th State in quest of revenge against Murkows­ki, the lone Repub­li­can sen­a­tor to vote “present” on Brett Kavanaugh­’s con­fir­ma­tion, and one of sev­en Sen­ate Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to impeach Trump after the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021, insur­rec­tion at the Unit­ed States Capitol.

The ral­ly at Alas­ka Air­lines Cen­ter was instruc­tive, not in Trump’s false claims, but for the tone of what Politi­co described last week as “Trumpi­fi­ca­tion” of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Court­ing crossover vot­ers is out, moti­va­tion and mobi­liza­tion of the “base” is in, as the par­ty approach­es the 2022 midterm elections.

“This is your pre­cious chance to dump the hor­rif­ic RINO (Repub­li­can in Name Only), Lisa Murkows­ki, who’s worse than a Demo­c­rat,” Trump told his true believers.

“She’s a total crea­ture of the Wash­ing­ton swamp and a tool of a cor­rupt estab­lish­ment the likes of which we’ve nev­er seen. The fake news media loves her.”

The for­mer pres­i­dent said Murkows­ki “wiped out ANWR”, refer­ring to the Arc­tic Refuge.

Truth be told, Murkows­ki slipped a pro­vi­sion into Repub­li­cans’ 2017 tax bill that opened the coastal plain of the Refuge to oil and gas leasing.

“She vot­ed to impeach me, and I did more for the state than any Pres­i­dent in his­to­ry, and that piece of” – Trump mouthed the word “garbage” – “vot­ed to impeach me.”

Alas­ka will be a test for Trumpification.

In 2010, Murkows­ki lost the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in August to a far-right Tea Par­ty chal­lenger named Joe Miller. The sen­a­tor mount­ed a gen­er­al elec­tion write-in cam­paign to hold onto her seat. It was the first such effort to suc­ceed since 1956, when Strom Thur­mond won in South Carolina.

Alas­ka has moved to ranked choice vot­ing this year. The top four vote get­ters in the August 16 pri­ma­ry, regard­less of par­ty, head onto the Novem­ber ballot.

Vot­ers will rank their choic­es. Trump decried the new sys­tem, say­ing with­out evi­dence that ranked vot­ing “can be crooked as hell.”

“We’re stuck with it,” said Trump.

“You know why? Because of Murkows­ki. It’s the only way she can win.”

Ex-Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin, a Trump-backed can­di­date for Alaska’s vacant U.S. House seat, depict­ed the midterm elec­tion as a holy war. “It’s no longer Demo­c­rat vs. Repub­li­can,” she told the crowd. “This is about con­trol ver­sus free­dom. It’s good ver­sus evil. It is a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle.” Added Palin, back­ing a 2024 Trump come­back, “Sir, we need you. Four more years. Four more years.”

Trump did far more vent­ing at Murkows­ki – “a lousy sen­a­tor”, “She’s the worst” — than prais­ing the senator’s chal­lenger Kel­ly Tshiba­ka, a for­mer Alas­ka state offi­cial. The for­mer pres­i­dent also took after Alas­ka Sen­a­tor Dan Sullivan.

Sul­li­van has endorsed his seat­mate Murkowski.

“Murkows­ki is a bad per­son and Sul­li­van should nev­er have endorsed her,” said Trump. “Sul­li­van should be ashamed of himself.”

Trump was on a vengeance mis­sion, but Trumpi­fi­ca­tion could bring changes to the U.S. Sen­ate and inten­si­fy grid­lock in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Murkows­ki has been cen­tral to what bipar­ti­san coop­er­a­tion there is in the cap­i­tal. She helped craft the bipar­ti­san gun safe­ty bill passed by Con­gress after the Uvalde, Texas, massacre.

She was a force behind the infra­struc­ture pack­age, which will pro­vide $3.5 bil­lion in high­way fund­ing for Alas­ka and mon­ey for essen­tial fer­ry ser­vice to sup­port rur­al communities.

Murkows­ki and Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, have bro­ken the ice to get con­struc­tion under­way on a new polar ice break­er, with a sec­ond under design.

Sev­er­al Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, back­ers of infra­struc­ture and gun safe­ty, are retir­ing this year. Would be replace­ments, in Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia, North Car­oli­na and Mis­souri, are hard lin­ers. Run­ning to replace Sen­a­tor Richard Burr, R‑North Car­oli­na, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ted Budd has called the infra­struc­ture pack­age “a lib­er­al Tro­jan horse for a social­ist agen­da.” J.D. Vance, nom­i­nat­ed to replace Sen­a­tor Rob Port­land, R‑Ohio, has described the bill as “a total dis­as­ter for our country.”

Celebri­ty physi­cian Mehmet Oz, run­ning to replace Sen­a­tor Pat Toomey, R‑Pennsylvania, has aban­doned his past sup­port for such gun safe­ty mea­sures as red flag laws, and vowed to “fight against fed­er­al gun con­trol schemes.”

Trump is a speak­er who goes off in many direc­tions. He butchered pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the name of new U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son, talked about giv­ing advice to U.S. com­man­ders in Iraq with the words: “I’d hit ‘em on the left, hit ‘em on the right, I’d hit ‘em in the (exple­tive) cen­ter – right smack.”

He mor­phed into a denun­ci­a­tion of trans­gen­der ath­letes, describ­ing NCAA swim­ming cham­pi­on Lia Thomas as “a per­son with a man’s body.”

Once “total­ly pro-choice”, Trump took a vic­to­ry lap over the Unit­ed States Supreme Court deci­sion that over­turned Roe vs. Wade. “We got it done,” said Trump, who named three of the indi­vid­u­als that signed the major­i­ty opinion.

Nor could Trump ignore the deci­sion by Tes­la mak­er Elon Musk to back out of his $44 bil­lion plan to pur­chase Twit­ter. “Elon. Elon. Elon,” exclaimed Trump. “He’s not going to buy Twit­ter. He’s got him­self a mess. I’ve looked into his con­tract. Ya know, Elon says he’s nev­er vot­ed Repub­li­can, but I didn’t know that because he told me that he vot­ed for me, so he’s anoth­er (exple­tive) artist.”

Such words are fre­quent­ly used to describe Don­ald Trump.