Murkowski slams Trump for ‘hateful, harmful’ anti-immigration comments

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski condemned former President Donald Trump's recent anti-immigrant comments, calling them “hateful, harmful rhetoric” in a social media post Wednesday.

“With the exception of Alaska Natives and Native Peoples, most of us are daughters and sons of immigrants who came to this country to build a better life for themselves and their families. Legal immigration from people across the world is woven into the fabric of American exceptionalism, and comments from the former president couldn’t be further from the truth,” Murkowski said in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.

“This is more hateful, harmful rhetoric from Donald Trump that is poisoning our country,” the Alaska senator added.

Murkowski’s post addressed Trump’s remarks at a campaign rally Saturday, where he said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Civil rights groups and the Biden campaign quickly compared Trump’s comments to language used by Adolf Hitler during the Nazi regime, and the White House accused Trump of “echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists.”

Trump doubled down on the comments on Tuesday, telling an audience in Iowa: ““They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing — they’re destroying our country.”

Although several other GOP senators distanced themselves from Trump’s remarks, few did so in such strong terms. Murkowski has criticized Trump in the past, and voted to convict the former president after his second impeachment in 2021.