Senator Flake says democracy under siege
WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, President Donald Trump’s most vocal Republican adversary in the Senate, cautioned in his farewell address Thursday that the “threats to our democracy from within and without are real.”
Flake declined to seek re-election to a second term, acknowledging that his battles with Trump over the past two years made it unlikely that he could survive a primary challenge. While Flake did not mention Trump in his speech Thursday, he said that describing the state of the nation’s politics as “not healthy is something of an understatement.”
“We of course are testing the institutions of American liberty in ways that none of us likely ever imagined we would — and in ways that we never should again,” Flake said.
Over the past two years, Flake has made it a point to call out Trump in his writings and speeches, accusing him of “reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour” and saying that his use of the terms “fake news” and “enemy of the people” was reminiscent of words infamously used by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
It’s unclear what role Flake could have in the Republican Party in the future. He has travelled to New Hampshire to speak to voters there and has not ruled out a run for the presidency, though he would be a huge underdog.
Flake, 55, served in the House for six terms and in the Senate for one term. He was one of the earliest and most prominent critics of spending that lawmakers diverted to their congressional districts, called earmarks. He was also an outlier among Republicans when it came to supporting an end of travel and trade restrictions with Cuba.
Flake also used his farewell speech to warn about global events. He said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hijacked democracy in his own country and is determined to do the same globally. Flake has been a vocal defender of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. He has refused in recent weeks to vote for any of Trump’s judicial nominees until he gets a floor vote on a bill to protect the special counsel.
“Let us recognize as authoritarianism reasserts itself in country after country that we are by no means immune,” Flake said.