Jeff Flake clarifies his Trump criticism
Senator denies likening president to Joseph Stalin
Sen. Jeff Flake’s plans to give a speech criticizing President Donald Trump for attacking the media as the “enemy of the people” — a term used by brutal Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — has generated new wave of attacks from the American right.
In a Monday afternoon appearance on CNN International, Flake, R-Ariz., backed off any suggestion that he was comparing Trump to Stalin, who was notorious for having political enemies killed or imprisoned in forced labor camps.
“I am in no way comparing President Trump to Joseph Stalin,” Flake told host Christiane Amanpour. “Joseph Stalin was a killer. Our president is not. But it just puzzles me as to why you’d use a phrase that is so loaded and that has such deeper meaning, the press being the enemy of the people.”
Flake said that if Trump really were like Stalin “people like me would be in Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay) or worse.” But the president’s attacks on the press nonetheless have implications
for journalists around the world.
“So there’s no comparison there to the man, but it just puzzles me as to why any American president would use a phrase so associated with someone like Joseph Stalin,” Flake added. “It just doesn’t comport, and it’s not good for any of us.”
Later in the day, Flake tweeted another clarification about the point he is making about Trump’s use of a Stalinist phrase:
“There is no comparison between POTUS & Stalin. Stalin was a maniacal killer. The point I will try to make in my speech is POTUS should not use a phrase so associated with Stalin like ‘enemy of the people’ to describe our free press.”
Flake is one of Trump’s most-vocal Republican critics who last year abandoned his 2018 re-election effort. On Sunday, he revealed that he intends to deliver a Senate floor speech today defending the free press from Trump’s relentless attacks.
According to a written excerpt of the speech provided to The Arizona Republic, Flake plans to say: “Mr. President, 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. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even (Stalin’s successor as USSR leader) 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.”
Headlines that Flake was set to compare Trump to Stalin set off conservatives on social media.
“I used to admire Flake, but he’s really gone around the bend,” conservative Instapundit commentator and blogger Glenn Reynolds tweeted. “Trump hasn’t starved anyone, imprisoned his political opponents, sent people to gulags, etc. This is an insult to Stalin’s victims, and to his listeners’ intelligence.”
“If Trump were Stalin, Jeff Flake would have been executed already,” Twitter user Patrick Cavanaugh responded.
Flake’s speech is timed to coincide with Trump’s promise to announce “fake news” awards. The president has tweeted that “the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year” will take aim at “Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media.” But while the “awards” gimmick is new, Trump’s hostility toward the media is well-established.
Flake said on CNN International that some of Trump’s “falsehoods,” like his claims about the crowd sizes at his inauguration, are “more innocuous,” but others are more serious.
“Gratefully, our institutions are strong, and certainly we have protections for a free press,” Flake said Monday. “But it’s not good when the president utters falsehoods ... To say things like the Russia matter, just broadly without being more precise, is a hoax. Or Russia’s intervention in the U.S. election is a hoax . ... Simply dismissing that as ‘fake news’ is damaging. And when that is just done reflexively, day after day, that has real consequences.”
In today’s speech, Flake will say that Trump’s use of a Stalinist phrase “alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party.”
“For they are shameful, repulsive statements,” Flake’s prepared remarks say. “And, of course, the president has it precisely backward — despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. 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 also will note that a new report says 262 journalists are imprisoned around the world, a number that includes 21 who Flake will say “are being held on ‘false news’ charges.”