Alaskan Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski had a tense moment with NBC News reporter Ryan Nobles after he pressed her on the backlash she faced for her vote on the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) on Tuesday.
Nobles caught up with Murkowski after she voted in favor of President Donald Trump’s $3.3 trillion spending bill, asking her to respond to criticism from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who claimed that she supported OBBB because it was a “bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country.”
“Oh my God,” Murkowski mumbled angrily before looking at Nobles.
“That’s what Sen. Paul said,” Nobles responded.
She then stared at Nobles without making a response for more than ten seconds.
“I didn’t say it, ma’am,” Nobles reiterated. “I’m just asking for your response.”
“My response is I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska, and I live up to that every single day,” Murkowski answered.
She added that it was “offensive” to claim that federal dollars being sent to a state is considered a “bailout.”
“Do I like this bill? No. Because I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests, but I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that we moved through an artificial deadline, an artificial timeline, to produce something—to meet a deadline rather than to actually try to produce the best bill for the country,” Murkowski answered. “But when I saw the direction that this is going—you know, you can either say, ‘I don’t like it,’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Paul’s office for a comment.
Senate Republicans successfully passed the bill on a 51-50 vote with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote.
Paul, along with Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, were the only Republicans who voted against the bill.
All Democrats voted no.
Ahead of the Senate vote, several last-minute deals were made, including the doubling of the rural hospital fund to $50 billion, which was pushed by Collins, and a rollback of the start date of supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) work requirements for states with higher payment error rates, like Alaska.
The bill now heads to the House, where Republican leaders are determined to have a final bill ready to be signed by Trump by Friday.
