Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona delivered an impassioned speech to the Senate on Wednesday defending freedom of the press and slamming President Donald Trump and his administration for engaging in what Flake called “a daily assault” on free speech that is “as unprecedented as it is unwarranted.”
In a 15-minute speech on the Senate floor, Flake said that our democracy will not last without belief in the work that journalists do to align our country around a shared set of facts.
Flake specifically referenced Trump’s characterization last February of the news media as “the enemy of the people,” explaining the dark origins of that phrase.
“So fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even [Soviet leader] Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of ‘annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with the supreme leader.”
The senator also lamented that the “fake news” label the president often uses to smear press coverage critical of his administration has spread around the globe, inspiring dictators and autocrats worldwide to use the phrase to attack journalists in their own countries. He offered some specific examples:
The state official in Myanmar, as one example, used the term to explain away genocide of the Rohingya, while Venezuelan President Maduro complained to the Russian propaganda outlet [RT] that the world media has spread lots of lies about Venezuela, adding, “This is what we call fake news today, isn’t it?”
From false claims about crowd size to efforts to derail the investigation into Russia’s interference in our election, Flake emphasized that untruths both trivial and consequential represent a threat to American sovereignty and national security.
Though the speech was very clearly aimed at Trump, Flake made a point to say that it’s the responsibility of all American politicians — especially those in the president’s party — to “resolve to be allies of the truth and not partners in its destruction.”
“It is the press’s obligation to uncover the truth about power. It is the people’s right to criticize their government, and it is our job to take it.”
Instead of fearing a dishonest press, Flake said Americans should fear a dishonest president: “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.”
Read the full transcript of Flake’s speech below:
From the very beginning, our freedom has been predicated on truth, the founders were visionary in that regard, understanding good faith and good facts between the governed and government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America. As a distinguished former member of this body, Patrick Moynahan said, everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Now, during the past year, I’m alarmed to say senator Moynahan’s proposition has likely been tested more severely than any time in our history. For it is that reason that I rise today to talk about the truth and the truth’s relationship to democracy. For without truth and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.
2017 was a year which saw the truth objective, empirical, evidence-based truth more battered and abused than any other time in the history of our country. At the hands of the biggest figure in the government. It was the year the public saw the White House enshrine alternative facts in the American lexicon as justification for what used to be simply called old fashioned falsehoods.
It was a year in which a daily assault on the constitutionally protected free speech was launched by the same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. The enemy of the people was how 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 Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even [Soviet leader] Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader. This alone should be the 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 had 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 all around the globe encounter members of US-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 their commitment and their sacrifice.
According to the international federation of journalists, 80 journalists were killed in 2017. 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 and who are being held on false news charges. Mr. President, so powerful is the presidency that the damage done by the sustained attack on the truth will not be confined to this president’s time in office. Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful, we question the powerful most ardently. To do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship. And so, we know well that no matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality.
No politician will ever tell us what the truth is and what it is not. And anyone who presumes to try to attack or manipulate the press for his own purposes should be made to realize his mistake and to be held to account. That is our job here. That is just as Madison, Hamilton, and Jay would have it. Of course a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the free press usually corrects itself when it’s made a mistake. Politicians don’t.
No longer can we compound the attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to those assaults on our institutions and, Mr. President, an American president who cannot take criticism, who must constantly deflect and distort and distract, who must find someone else to blame, is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president adds to that danger. Now, we are told via Twitter that today the president intends to announce his choice for the quote, “most corrupt and dishonest media awards.” It beggars belief that an American president would engage in such a spectacle. But here we are.
And so, 2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it. In this effort, the choice is quite simple. And in this effort the truth needs as many allies as possible. Together, my colleagues, we are powerful. Together, we have it within us to turn back these attacks, to right these wrongs, repair this damage, restore reverence for institutions, and prevent further moral vandalism.
Together, united in this purpose to do our jobs under the constitution, without regard to party or party loyalty, let us resolve to be allies of the truth and not partners in its destruction. It is not my purpose here to inventory all of the unofficial untruths of the past year, but a brief survey is in order. Some untruths are trivial, such as a bizarre contention regarding the crowd size of last year’s inaugural. But some untruths are not at all trivial, such as the seminal untruth of the President’s political career, the oft-repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama.
Also not trivial, are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate. To the effort to undermine confidence in the federal courts, federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, and the free press to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all, the supposed hoax at the heart of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
To be very clear, to call the Russian matter a hoax as the president has done so many times is a falsehood. We know the attacks orchestrated by Russian government against the election were real and constitute a grave threat to both American sovereignty and to our national security. It is in the interest of every American to get to the bottom of this matter wherever the investigation leads. Ignoring or denying the truth about hostile Russian intentions towards the United States leaves us vulnerable to future attacks. We are told by our intelligence agencies that these attacks are ongoing. Yet it has recently been reported that there has not been a single cabinet-level meeting regarding Russian interference and how to defend America against these attacks. Not one.
What might seem like a casual and routine untruth, so casual and routine that it has now become the white noise of Washington, is in fact a serious lapse in the defense of our country.
Mr. President, let us be clear, the impulses underlying the dissemination of such untruths are not benign. They have the effect of eroding trust in our public institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them. The destructive effect of this kind of behavior on our democracy cannot be overstated.
Mr. President, every word that a president utters projects American values around the world. The values of free expression and reverence for the free press have been our global hallmark. For it is our ability to freely air the truth that keeps our government honest and keeps the people free.
Between the mighty and modest, truth is a great leveler. And so, respect for freedom of the press has always been one of our most important exports. But a recent report published in our free press should raise an alarm. Reading from the story, “In February, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad brushed off an amnesty international report that some 13,000 people have been killed in one of his military prisons by saying, ‘you can forge anything these days.’”
We’re living in a fake news era. In the Philippines, President [Rodrigo] Duterte complained of being demonized by fake news. Last month, the report continues, with our president “laughing by his side Duterte called reporters spies.” In July, Venezuelan President [Nicolas] Maduro complained to the Russian propaganda outlet that the world media has spread lots of false versions, lots of lies about his country. Adding, this is what we call fake news today, isn’t it? There are more. The state official in Myanmar recently said there’s no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news. He was referring to the persecuted ethnic group. Leaders in Singapore, a country known for restricting free speech, have promised fake news legislation in the next year and on and on and on.
This feedback loop is disgraceful, Mr. President. Not only has the past year seen an American president borrow despotic language to refer to the free press, but it seems he has now, in turns, inspired dictators and authoritarians with his own language. That is reprehensible.
We are not in a “fake news era,” as Bashar al-Assad says. We are in an era in which the authoritarian impulse is reasserting itself to challenge free people and free societies everywhere. In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous. It is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be the cause for profound alarm and spur to action. Add to that the, by now, predictable habit of calling true things false and false things true. And we have a recipe for disaster.
George Orwell warned, the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. Now, any of us who have spent time in public life have endured news coverage we felt was jaded or unfair. But in our positions, to deploy even idle threats, to use laws or regulations to stifle criticism, is corrosive to our democratic institutions. Simply put, it is the press’s obligation to uncover the truth about power. It is the people’s right to criticize their government and it is our job to take it.
What is the goal of laying siege to the truth? President John F. Kennedy, in a stirring speech, on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America was eloquent in answer to that question. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas and alien philosophies and competitive values for a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation afraid of its people. Mr. President, the question of why the truth is now under such assault may be for historians to determine. But for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions.
We are a mature democracy. It is past time to stop excusing or ignoring or, worse, endorsing these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise a truth to the sake of our politics, we are lost. I sincerely thank my colleagues for their indulgence today.
I’ll close by borrowing the words of an early adherent to my faith and I find has special resonance at this moment. His name was John Jacques and as a young missionary in England, he contemplated the question, “what is truth?” His search was expressed in poetry and ultimately in a hymn that I grew up with, titled “Oh Say, What is Truth.” It ends as follows: “Then say, what is truth? ‘Tis the last and the first, / For the limits of time it steps o’er. / Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst. / Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst, / Eternal ... unchanged ... evermore.”
Thank you, Mr. President.