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Departing Sen. Jeff Flake on Wednesday ripped President Trump for his attacks on the media as the “enemy of the people,” compared them to Russian dictator Josef Stalin and said they should be a “source of great shame.”
“It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies,” the Arizona Republican said on the Senate floor.
“It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ’enemy of the people,’ that even Nikita Khrushchev forbad its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of ’annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with the supreme leader,” Flake continued.
He said Trump’s “repulsive” statements show he has it backward — “despotism is the enemy of the people.”
“This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party,” he said. “The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him ‘fake news,’ it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.”
Flake, who announced in October 2017 that he wouldn’t seek re-election, blasted Trump’s use of the term “fake news” and ticked off a number of falsehoods put forward by the president, including calling the Russia probe a “hoax,” alleging massive voter fraud during the 2016 election and raising questions about former President Obama’s birthplace.
He urged his Democratic and Republican colleagues in Congress “to be allies in the truth and not partners in its destruction.”
“Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful. In fact, we question the powerful most ardently. To do so is our birthright,” he said.
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