Outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Monday he was "in no way" comparing President Donald Trump to Joseph Stalin, despite a reference to the Soviet dictator in a speech he plans to give Wednesday criticizing Trump for his public comments on the news media.
"Joseph Stalin was a killer; our president is not," Sen. Flake told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday night. "It just puzzles me as to why [Trump] would use a phrase that is so loaded and that has some deeper meaning, the press being the enemy of the people. That is a big concern. What this president does – the most powerful man in the world – has lasting implications and it has implications for journalists worldwide and for our free press in this country.
"If the American president was like Stalin, people like me would be in Gitmo, or worse. It just puzzles me as to why any American president would use a phrase so associated with somebody like Joseph Stalin. It just doesn't comport, and it's not good for any of us."
Flake plans to deliver his speech before Trump announces the winners of his self-described "fake news awards," and will reportedly denounce Trump for calling the news media "the enemy of the American people" last year.
He is also poised to blast Trump's "unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally protected free press" he will call "as unprecedented as it is unwarranted," according to excerpts released by his office.
"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," Flake will say. "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."
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