'Free press is the despot’s enemy': Jeff Flake destroys Trump from the Senate floor for 'battering' the truth

Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona took to the Senate floor on Wednesday to blast President Donald Trump.

Flake compared Trump to former Soviet communist dictator Josef Stalin over his attacks on the press.

"I rise today to talk about truth's relationship to democracy," Flake said.

The senator said that objective truth had been "battered" over the past year, with help from "the most powerful person in our government."

"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," he said. "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."

Flake added that "free press is the despot’s enemy."

"No president will even have dominion over objective reality," he continued, saying that Trump was "charting a very dangerous path" with his inability to withstand criticism.

"2018 must be a year in which truth takes a stand."

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