President Trump called Sen. Lisa Murkowski a disgrace to Alaska and charged that ranked choice voting is a Democrat scam meant to confuse voters and sink Dan Sullivan.
Saturday night on Truth Social, the president hit Murkowski and Alaska’s voting rules after she objected to a Justice Department lawsuit over the November Senate ballot. The Hill reported the post and the week’s clash.
Two candidates named Sullivan will appear in the Alaska Senate race. Trump says that setup, paired with ranked choice voting, is built to peel support from incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and hand an opening to Democrat Mary Peltola.
Trump did not soften the language. He cast Murkowski as out of step with Alaska and with voters who want a clean ballot.
He wrote that Murkowski “only got elected because of Corrupt Ranked Choice Voting,” and he framed her anger as a reaction to his own warning about the system.
On Truth Social Saturday night, Trump said:
“The Republicans’ Worst Senator, by far, Lisa Murkowski, of the Great State of Alaska (A State for which I produced, on a continuing basis, Billions and Billions of Dollars, and which Crooked Joe Biden and the Dumocrats had totally shut down, Then I came back, and delivered even more!), who only got elected because of Corrupt Ranked Choice Voting, is upset because I revealed what everyone knows, that the Ranked Choice Voting Ballot is a TOTAL DEMOCRAT SCAM meant to confuse the Voter, so that Senator Dan Sullivan will lose Votes to a man who has never participated in Politics before.”
He added a second shot in the same message.
“Lisa Murkowski is a DISGRACE to Alaska and our Country. You just don’t get any worse!”
In Alaska’s system, the top four finishers in the primary move on to the general election. That is how both Sen. Dan Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan, a separate candidate with no long political record in the reporting, can land on the same November ballot.
Trump’s claim is direct: the ballot design and ranked choice tabulation create room for voter mix-ups that cost the incumbent Republican votes.
The fight did not start with the Truth Social post. On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit over the Alaska Senate contest and the similar-name problem on the ballot.
The suit, as described in the reporting, said the presence of a candidate with a name close to the incumbent Republican senator’s would produce an invalid win for Democrat Mary Peltola. Trump has said the filing’s purpose is to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses.
Friday, Trump told reporters he drove the challenge himself.
“I’m the one who said do it,”
That puts the White House on record as ordering a legal move aimed at election certification in a Republican-held seat. It also puts Murkowski on the other side of her own party’s president and her state’s other Republican senator.
Ballot labeling is part of the dispute. The reporting notes that the incumbent senator is marked as “incumbent” and “Republican” on this year’s ballot. Murkowski says that distinction already solved the confusion problem. Trump and the Justice Department are acting as if it did not.
Murkowski answered on social media Friday. She defended Alaska voters and the state’s ballot design, and she rejected the lawsuit outright.
She wrote:
“Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot.”
She followed with a second line aimed at Main Justice.
“The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit,”
Her position is plain. Local officials drew a line between the two Sullivans. Voters can read it. Federal lawyers should stay out.
Trump’s position is just as plain. He says ranked choice voting helped Murkowski win, confuses ordinary voters, and now threatens Dan Sullivan through a little-known namesake on the same ballot. He is not treating that as a technical glitch. He is treating it as a partisan design.
The timeline is tight. Justice filed Thursday. Trump claimed ownership of the suit Friday and took public credit. Murkowski pushed back the same day. Trump’s Truth Social attack on Murkowski and ranked choice voting landed Saturday night. The November ballot is next.
Left unsettled in the public record so far are the full docket details of the Justice Department case, any court ruling on the filing, and the complete ballot lines for Daniel J. Sullivan beyond the incumbent labels given to Sen. Dan Sullivan. What is on the record is a president willing to use the Justice Department over certification, a Republican senator calling that lawsuit illegitimate, and a voting system Trump says is built to muddle the count.
When a ballot carries two Sullivans and ranked choice rules decide who survives, voters deserve a system that is simple, honest, and hard to game, not one that rewards confusion while senators argue over who fixed it.
