By SUZANNE DOWNING
Sept. 25, 2026 – Sen. Lisa Murkowski came to Mary Peltola’s defense Thursday after a New York Times investigation described an unhinged Peltola, prone to angry outbursts, slurs, physical violence against staffers, and turmoil among staff in the former congresswoman’s office and Senate campaign.
Asked by CNN whether the report accurately portrayed Peltola, Murkowski said, “I think there are many parts of it that I find inflammatory.” She pointed to the pressure Peltola faced after winning a 2022 special election, then losing her husband in a 2023 plane crash while serving her first term in Congress.
Murkowski did not mention that Sen. Dan Sullivan also lost his parents recently, in 2019 and 2020 and that his wife Julie lost her parents during the same period, in 2020 and 2021.
“That’s pressure that is hard for anybody to bear,” Murkowski told CNN about Peltola, completely ignoring what the Sullivans had gone through.
The defense is politically striking. Murkowski is tepidly supporting her Republican Senate colleague Sullivan, in his race against Peltola. But she and Peltola are longtime friends, and in 2022 Murkowski endorsed the raging Democrat for Alaska’s US House seat over Republican challengers Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. Peltola supported Murkowski in her Senate reelection campaign that year. Murkowski also backed Peltola’s 2024 House bid for reelection, which Peltola lost to Nick Begich.
This year Murkowski has chosen Sullivan, but has not defended him against the barrage of attacks he has endured from the Peltola campaign.
As for Sullivan, he called the reported conduct of Peltola “very disturbing” and a “character issue.”
The Times report drew on interviews with former aides and text messages. Among its allegations were profane blowups, the use of slurs and an incident in which Peltola allegedly shoved a staffer over a missing memo. It also described aides being asked to feed live crickets to Peltola’s pet chameleon.
Democrats have excused Peltola’s behavior as a response to grief.
Murkowski did not say the allegations were false. Her response was a defense of Peltola’s circumstances and a criticism of parts of the report’s portrayal.
6 thoughts on “Murkowski defends Mean Mary: Abuse is OK if you are grieving”
> Abuse is OK if you are grieving
Not surprising for the modern feminist. Male failure is moralized: grow up, work harder, stop watching porn, control your anger, earn more, become useful. Female failure is often therapeuticized: understand your trauma, honor your emotions, enforce your boundaries, protect your peace, consider how the system failed you. One sex is routinely told that maturity means mastering oneself; the other is increasingly encouraged to understand and love itself as is with no accountability or moral framework.
Correct. Women should not have the right to vote. Only land owning biological males.
We need to hear from poster “house husband” about abuse suffered from the murky one!
So by US Senator Murkowski’s acceptance standard “she thinks a divorcee is okay to verbally, emotionally, and mentally abuse and neglect their child(ren) in the wake of a divorce because the divorcee is grieving by the loss of a marriage”
So when is Abuse not okay? @US Sen Murkowski?
Embracing emotional incontinence
So, according to Lisa, acting like a female dog, and calling other women female dogs is ok “if” one is grieving. Got it.
I miss the days, those before commie political correctness, when we could call a bitch a bitch, whether human or canine.
Don’t cancel my comment, I’m grieving.