STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve also said you’re going to be giving a series of speeches on President Trump and his relationship with the truth and his relationship with the press, including one that I believe is coming this week. We’ve gotten some excerpts of what you’re planning to say, taking on the president’s comments about calling the press the enemy of the people. And I just want to read a portion of what we’ve had.
It’s a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Joseph 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 it’s use. And of course, the president has it precisely backward. Despotism is the enemy of the people, the free press is the despot’s enemy.
What are you trying to do with these speeches?
FLAKE: Well, I — what I’m trying to say is, you know, you — you can talk about crowd size and this is pretty innocuous if there’s a falsehood. But when you reflexively refer to the press as the enemy of the people or fake news, that has real damage. It has real damage to our standing in the world. And I noted how — how bad it is for a president to — to take what was popularized by Joseph Stalin, the enemy of the people, to refer to the press.
And then now, today, you have authoritarians across the world using the term fake news to justify cracking down on their opposition or — or staunch legitimate debate. That’s nothing we should be proud of. And so I’m going to talk about how damaging that is. It’ll be I think on the same day, probably, Wednesday, that the president is giving out some fake news awards. And I — I just want — want the president to know that this has real consequences.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And just to be clear, you don’t believe the president is telling the truth that denied he used the words in that Oval Office meeting on Thursday?
FLAKE: All I can say is what I heard directly following the meeting by those who were in the meeting.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Flake, thanks for your time this morning.
FLAKE: Thank you.
(via: Breitbart)