President Trump’s secretary of defense said Sunday that he doesn’t “have any issues with the press myself,” breaking with the president’s assertions that media is the “enemy of the American people.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was responding to a question about whether he agrees with Trump’s criticism of the press.
“I’ve had some rather contentious times with the press, but no, as far as I’m concerned, the press is a constituency that we deal with and I don’t have any issues with the press myself,” he told reporters traveling with him in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump on Friday posted on Twitter that the “fake news media,” including the New York Times, CNN and NBC News, are “the enemy of the American people.”
Sen. John McCain said Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that suppressing a free press is “how dictators get started.”
“If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and sometimes adversarial press. Without it, I’m afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started,” McCain said.
