Retiring senator Arizona Jeff Flake accused President Donald Trump of reckless disregard for the truth Wednesday, saying that the White House had launched an “unrelenting daily assault on constitutionally protected free speech.”
Speaking from the Senate floor, Flake said that Trump had waged a constant war on the Washington press and done serious damage to the public’s trust in our national institutions, while empowering unscrupulous leaders around the world to do the same.
“An American president who cannot take criticism, who must constantly deflect and distort and distract, who must find someone else to blame, is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president adds to the danger,” Flake said.
The occasion of Flake’s speech was the “Fake News Awards” that President Trump said he would be awarding Wednesday “to the most corrupt and biased of the mainstream media.” On Tuesday, press secretary Sarah Sanders was vague on whether the awards would actually take place as promised, calling them a “potential event.”
I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018
Flake’s speech had generated advanced interest because word spread that he would compare Trump to Joseph Stalin in his address, which the Arizona senator denied in interviews prior to Wednesday. “I am in no way comparing President Trump to Joseph Stalin,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “Joseph Stalin was a killer. Our president is not.” Instead, Flake said, he was concerned about Trump’s use of the phrase “enemy of the people” to describe the media.
“It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade 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,” read a prepared copy of his remarks.
Flake was not the only Republican senator to protest the president’s treatment of the media this week. On Tuesday evening, John McCain, Flake’s senior counterpart in Arizona, published an op-ed in the Washington Post decrying Trump’s attempts to discredit the press.
“While administration officials often condemn violence against reports abroad, Trump continues his unrelenting attacks on the integrity of American journalists and news outlets,” McCain wrote. “This has provided cover for repressive regimes to follow suit.”
