Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) stood on the Senate floor in an anticipated speech and blistered Donald Trump, especially on the way he has tried to blast reality with the term “fake news.” Then, he compared the sitting president to Joseph Stalin.
Flake’s words flew across the Twitter world:
‘2017 was a year which saw the truth – objective, empirical, evidence-based truth – more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government.’
WATCH LIVE: Sen. Jeff Flake rebukes President Trump from the Senate floor, calling out Trump’s repeated attacks on the media https://t.co/lLAb2c84kD pic.twitter.com/f3lUAFnD7I
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 17, 2018
Flake condemned Trump’s untruths:
‘The impulses underlying the dissemination of such untruths are not benign. They have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them. The destructive effect of this kind of behavior on our democracy cannot be overstated.’
“For without truth and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last,” Sen. Jeff Flake says https://t.co/lLAb2c84kD pic.twitter.com/up5XBLpwVe
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 17, 2018
Then, Flake hit Trump hard, comparing him to the infamous Russian leader Joseph Stalin:
‘”The enemy of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017. 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.’
Sen. Jeff Flake: “The president has it precisely backward: Despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy.” https://t.co/6IEvAkFnig pic.twitter.com/xinNh0dSh9
— ABC News (@ABC) January 17, 2018
The senator continued:
‘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.’
Sen. Jeff Flake calls Pres. Trump’s attacks on the press “unprecedented” and “unwarranted”: “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.” pic.twitter.com/9iQODWsZja
— ABC News (@ABC) January 17, 2018
Featured Image via Getty Images/Win McNamee.