Attention then shifted to Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, the closest things the Senate still has to moderate Republicans, and the two senators who with John McCain deep-sixed Trump’s first budget bill back in 2017,

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who voted against the bill, said Republicans could have won his vote by changing a provision related to the government’s legal borrowing limit, but they chose “pork and subsidies for Alaska” instead. Asked about Paul’s comment by NBC News, Murkowski froze and gave a reporter a death stare.