The following are excerpts from a May 31 meeting between Sen. Lisa Murkowski and the Anchorage Daily News editorial board.
On her first interaction with President-elect Donald Trump after his election:
He had not been sworn in, it was right after Thanksgiving. I wanted to weigh in on who the Secretary of the Interior should be. And so I was kind of like, “What adviser should I talk with?” And he didn’t have any advisers. And so I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll just call him myself.” And so I got a number that somebody else had — so I called, and the president answers the phone.
It was a Saturday morning, and I call this number, and this man answers. I’m like, “Hello, this is Lisa Murkowski, I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Trump.” So he says, “How are you?” And then he goes on to say, “You know, I really love Alaska, I’m just fascinated by Alaska.” And I said, “And to whom am I speaking?” And he said, “Well, this is Donald Trump!”
I was on this end of the country, and I was just waking up, because I thought I was going to get a voicemail or his secretary. I then realized, “OK, this is your shot to come clean with this guy who’s now going to be the president.” He said, “You know, I did well in Alaska, didn’t I?”
And I said, “Yes sir, you did.” And I said, “So, I wasn’t one of those Republicans who supported you.” And he said, “Uh huh.” And I said, “But here’s the deal: You won; I won. You want to do good things for the country; I want to do good things for the state. I figure we can be working together to do just that.” And he said, “Absolutely.” And that’s kind of how we have approached the issues that we’ve been working on.
On her father, Frank Murkowski, contemplating a…
