Trump takes flak for press attacks
Senators condemn president’s position, ‘fake news’ rhetoric
WASHINGTON — On a day President Donald Trump promised to deliver “Fake News Awards,” two Republican senators as well as several Democrats warned Wednesday that his unceasing attacks on a free press are undermining a fundamental tenet of democracy and emboldening despots abroad.
Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has emerged as one of Trump’s fiercest Republican critics, delivered an impassioned speech from the Senate floor, comparing Trump’s anti-media rhetoric to that of the murderous Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and calling on his colleagues to speak out against Trump’s “shameful, repulsive statements.”
Recalling Trump’s first year in office, Flake said, “2017 was a year which saw the truth — objective, empirical, evidence-based truth — more battered and abused than at any time in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government."
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Dick Durbin of Illinois also spoke out against Trump’s rhetoric, echoing Flake’s accusation that Trump is trying to upend the distinction between objective truth and lying.
The bipartisan rebukes of the president marked another seminal moment in the Trump era, which has come to be defined by his routine challenges to political norms. It is common for lawmakers to criticize presidents on policy, but less so for members of their own party, and yet exceedingly rare for any of them to fault a president’s fealty to basic democratic values.
“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 added.
Flake’s comments were buttressed by his fellow Arizona Republican, Sen. John McCain, who warned in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that Trump’s efforts to undermine the media are “being closely watched by foreign leaders who are already using his words as cover as they silence and shutter one of the key pillars of democracy.”
Both men made the point that Trump has stood on its head the United States’ traditional role as an example to the world of press freedom. Governments and autocrats — in Egypt, Libya, Myanmar, Singapore, Turkey and Venezuela, among others — have cited Trump’s “fake news” theme in acting against press criticism in their countries.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused Flake, who is not running for re-election, of seeking attention. She also accused him of hypocrisy because he visited Cuba, which has jailed journalists, and served “as a mouthpiece for the oppressive Cuban government.”
“Certainly, I think our position here at the White House is that we welcome access to the media every day,” she said. “I’m standing right here, taking questions. The president does so regularly.”
Trump tweeted Jan. 2 that he would announce “THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR” at 5 p.m. Jan. 8. He later wrote on Twitter that the awards would “be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th.”
While White House press officials could provide no information throughout the day, just after 8 p.m. Trump tweeted “And the FAKE NEWS winners are...” in the style of a Hollywood awards show, and linked to a Republican Party website.
It listed 10 instances of media errors, including one that was not a factual mistake but rather a bad prediction from a New York Times columnist. Most of the errors resulted in corrections, disciplinary action for the reporters or both.
Trump has used the term “fake news” on his Twitter feed at least 167 times since being elected, according to a search in an online archive — most often to disparage reporting about him or his administration.
“Fake news” initially referred to hoax stories believed to be planted by Russian operatives in an attempt to influence the presidential election. Trump co-opted the term to disparage legitimate reporting.
Flake, in his speech, pointed to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists noting that 21 of 262 journalists imprisoned in 2017 were charged with “false news.”
He read accounts of Syrian President Bashar Assad dismissing an Amnesty International report of 13,000 deaths in his military prisons as “fake news” and of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, whose government has been implicated in thousands of extrajudicial killings, calling reporters “spies” — while Trump laughed beside him during a meeting in November.
“The phrase ‘fake news’ — granted legitimacy by an American president — is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens,” McCain said.