Retiring GOP Senator Jeff Flake to give speech equating Trump to despots like Stalin

By Robert A. Vella

Retiring Republican senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, has prepared a public speech he will deliver in the next few days.  Excerpts released to the press condemn President Trump as an undemocratic despot hostile towards the news media.  Flake’s prepared remarks equate Trump’s tactics to those of Joseph Stalin who ruthlessly suppressed freedoms in the former U.S.S.R. as a means to control information, eliminate dissent, and to solidify his hold on power.

From:  In planned speech, Sen. Jeff Flake compares Trump’s media attacks to comments by Stalin

2017 was a year which saw the truth — objective, empirical, evidence-based truth — more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. “The enemy of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even 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.

This 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. 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.

I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of “fake news” are dubious, at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of U.S. based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to commitment and their sacrifice. Mr. President, a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists documents that the number of journalists imprisoned around the world has reached 262, which is a new record. This total includes 21 reporters who are being held on “false news” charges.

Commentary by The Secular Jurist:  Comparing Trump to Stalin is certainly valid, although I’d like to point out an important distinction.  While both figures are megalomaniacal, Stalin was far more sophisticated in his strategy and tactics.  The term Machiavellian is apropos in his case while it not so in Trump’s case.