Flake, McCain decry Trump’s ongoing attacks on the media
President later touts ‘Fake News Award’ winners
WASHINGTON — On a day President Donald Trump promised to deliver “Fake News Awards,” two Republican senators as well as several Democrats warned on 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 antipress rhetoric to that of the murderous Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and calling on his colleagues to speak out against Trump’s “shameful, repulsive statements.”
‘Battered’ truth
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 and traditions. 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 press 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.
Trump announced the recipients of his “Fake News Awards” on Twitter Wednesday night.
Trump tweeted a link to the winners list, which was hosted on GOP.com. The web page promptly went offline.
The “award” recipients included a mix of reporters for the New York Times, ABC News and the Washington Post, as well as reports published by CNN, Time, Newsweek and the New York Times. The winners list also included one topic: “Russia Collusion,” which the list called “perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.”
Under the winners was a list of 10 of Trump’s accomplishments, among them the passage of the GOP tax cuts and the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Trump listed the highlights in subsequent tweets:
“Despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage, there are many great reporters I respect and lots of GOOD NEWS for the American people to be proud of!” Trump tweeted.
The president has used the term “fake news” on his Twitter feed at least 167 times, according to a search in an online archive — most often to disparage reporting about him or his administration.
‘Enemy of the people’
The attacks on the media have been an effective political tool since his election campaign, rallying supporters and insulating him, to some extent, from unflattering reporting.
“Fake news” initially referred to hoax stories believed to be planted by Russian operatives in an attempt to influence the presidential election. Trump coopted the term to disparage legitimate reporting.
Trump, who once last year called the press the “enemy of the people,” recently threatened to seek harsher libel laws and revoke networks’ broadcast licenses, areas where his powers are limited. Members of his administration have spoken similarly about the media, complaining that reporters have lowered their standards to undermine Trump’s legitimacy.
“There’s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly,” Sanders told reporters in December.
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.