Alaska's all-Republican Congressional delegation reacted with near-silence Wednesday to Donald Trump's expression of hope that Russian intelligence services hacked Hillary Clinton's email and his suggestion they publish what they find.
At the same time, two candidates challenging those incumbents quickly condemned the statements of the GOP presidential nominee.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who's up for re-election this year, was campaigning in Southeast and unavailable for comment, a spokesman said Wednesday. A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Don Young didn't respond to a request for comment.
And U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, at a Wednesday morning meeting with Alaska Dispatch News staff, deflected questions about Trump's statements by encouraging reporters to give more scrutiny to Clinton and to her March comments about the need for clean energy jobs in areas where Clinton said, "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."
"Do you think that's a good statement? Do you think that's good for Alaska?" Sullivan asked. "Why don't you write about that?"
[Trump calls calls on Russia to hack Clinton emails]
Sullivan initially said he was unfamiliar with the comments from his party's presidential nominee about Clinton's emails. Trump, at a Florida news conference, said: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."
"I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said.
When those comments were described to Sullivan, he said: "I disagree with that," then pointed to other Trump policies with which he's disagreed.
"But I'm just saying to you guys, this isn't an election that's in a vacuum," Sullivan said. "You have a Secretary Hillary Clinton who, again, has her own kind of character issues — pretty dramatic by the way."
He added: "Every time Mr. Trump says something I disagree with, I'm the first guy out of the box to say it." But a spokesperson later in the day said Sullivan had no additional comment on Trump's statements.
"Sen. Sullivan believes it's time that the Clinton campaign decide whether or not Hillary Clinton's 30,000 unauthorized deleted emails are a national security issue or not," the spokesperson, Mike Anderson, said in a statement. "He stands by his recommendations to the Dispatch that their readers would benefit from at least a few stories on how Hillary Clinton's stated policies such as no Arctic development, putting coal miners out of work, and further executive action on restricting Alaskans' Second Amendment rights, could impact our citizens during these challenging economic times."
Two candidates to replace Murkowski and Young were quick to denounce Trump's comments in phone interviews.
"The commander in chief to the United States military cannot be inviting foreign governments to commit espionage on American citizens," said Margaret Stock, an attorney and retired U.S. Army Reserves lieutenant colonel who's challenging Murkowski as an independent.
Steve Lindbeck, a former public broadcasting executive who's running against Young, said Trump's comments were "breathtakingly dangerous and irresponsible." And he said he expected "responsible leaders" to condemn them.