Flake to denounce Trump media attacks as Stalinist in Senate speech [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Source: NBC

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Flake is planning to slam President Donald Trump's attacks on the press on the Senate floor this week in a speech that will compare the president's use of the term "enemy of the people" to describe the media to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

"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, R-Ariz., will say, according to excerpts of the speech provided to NBC News.

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"It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase 'enemy of the people,' that even (later Soviet leader) Nikita Khrushchev forbad its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin to for the purpose of 'annihilating such individuals' who disagreed with the supreme leader," Flake will say.

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The speech from one of Trump's fiercest Republican critics comes as the president has promoted his "Fake News Awards" on Twitter, saying that the awards, expected to be on Wednesday, will go to "the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media."

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/flake-denounce-trump-media-attacks-stalinist-senate-speech-n837556

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And before we get the condemnations of Jeff Flake:

Yes, I know he could do more.

Yes, I know he sides with Trump too often.

But I want to thank him for at least doing this, for timing it for the same day as Trump's "Fake News" awards (he said something about that timing on NBC), and for speaking up at least this much when so many of his Republican colleagues are afraid to.