Sen. Jeff Flake is planning to slam President Donald Trump's attacks on the press on the Senate floor this week in a speech that will compare the president's use of the term "enemy of the people" to describe the media to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
"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, R-Ariz., will say, according to excerpts of the speech provided to NBC News.
Trump called the media the "enemy of the people" in a February tweet. "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" the president wrote on Twitter.
"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," Flake plans to say in the Senate remarks.
