'I want him out': GOP senator calls for Trump to be ousted from White House

In a candid interview on Friday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined a growing and bipartisan list of lawmakers clamoring for Donald Trump to be forced out of office in the final days of his one-term presidency.

She became the first GOP senator to make such a call in the wake of a deadly insurrection attempt on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Murkowski made it clear that she places much of the blame for the act of domestic terrorism on Trump for his incendiary rhetoric before his ardent followers stormed the U.S. Capitol building as a joint session of Congress convened to ratify the Electoral College vote tally declaring President-elect Joe Biden the rightful winner of November’s election.

“I want him to resign,” she declared. “I want him out. He has caused enough damage.”

The Alaska Republican referenced Trump’s now-deleted tweet in which he vowed to skip Biden’s inauguration ceremony.

In response to the post, which was seen as a tacit signal to his violent supporters that the event would be a safe target for attack, the social media platform permanently suspended Trump’s account. That was followed by similar decisions by a host of other Big Tech firms.

Referencing the tweet, Murkowski said: “I think he should leave. He said he’s not going to show up. He’s not going to appear at the inauguration. He hasn’t been focused on what is going on with COVID. He’s either been golfing or he’s been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice president.”

She suggested that Trump “doesn’t want to stay” in the White House anyway.

“He only wants to stay there for the title,” Murkowski said. “He only wants to stay there for his ego. He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don’t think he’s capable of doing a good thing.”

The senator stopped short of condemning all of the president’s supporters who showed up in D.C., but made it clear that those who engaged in lawlessness must be held to account.

She noted that “many, many, many, many good Americans” might have showed up to protest with honorable intentions but they were provoked to violence and mayhem by Trump’s own words.

Murkowski added: “I will attribute it to the president, who said, even after his vice president told him that morning, ‘I do not have the constitutional authority to do what you have asked me to do. I cannot do it. I have to protect and uphold the Constitution.’ Even after the vice president told President Trump that, he still told his supporters to fight. How are they supposed to take that? It’s an order from the president. And so that’s what they did. They came up and they fought and people were harmed, and injured and died.”

In light of Trump’s rhetoric and the support he has received from some in the GOP, she said her future with the party is uncertain.

“Well, you know, there’s a lot of people who actually thought that I did that in 2010, think that I became an independent,” she said. “I didn’t have any reason to leave my party in 2010. I was a Republican who ran a write-in campaign and I was successful. But I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”

In the lower chamber of Congress, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., became the first in his party to recommend Trump’s removal when he called for the presidential Cabinet to begin implementation of the 25th Amendment.