Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said Thursday on PBS’s “Firing Line” that she would vote for her colleague, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), if the 2024 election were between him, President Joe Biden, and former President Donald Trump.
Host Margaret Hoover asked, “Your Democratic colleague, Joe Manchin, is being courted by an outside effort to run independently in the 2024 election. This has been called by the organization No Labels, an insurance policy. Do you see any scenario where a third-party candidacy isn’t a spoiler for Donald Trump and just returns him to the White House?”
Murkowski said, “Yeah, you know, there’s there’s been no end of second-guessing and people moving the numbers around. I don’t know on that. Others are smarter than me with with with elections and can weigh in there and they certainly have. Think about it. If we go into a 2024 scenario where it’s basically a redo of 2020 between Trump and Biden. What does that say? That we have nobody better than these two.”
She continued, “And so, an independent or somebody who is offering something in the middle. People are hungry for that. I can tell you, I’m talking to people up north. They’re asking because they know that I’m very close with Joe Manchin and I brought him up to this state a couple of times and he endorsed me. I’ve endorsed him.”
Hoover asked, “Would you support him if he decided to run?”
Murkowski replied, “I tell you, if it’s a matchup between Biden and Trump, I know exactly where I’d go. I would go with, I would go with Joe Manchin.”
She added, “I am one who doesn’t like to use my vote for the lesser of evils. I want to be proactive in who I think could do the job. I think Manchin could do the job. But will our system allow for that? That I don’t know.”
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