Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake delivered a speech on the Senate floor that bashed President Donald Trump, comparing his attacks on the media to former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, according to CNN.
Flake said Trump shouldn’t have the ability to manipulate the truth.
"No politician will ever get to tell us what the truth is and is not. And anyone who presumes to try to attack or manipulate the truth to his own purposes should be made to realize the mistake and be held to account,” Flake said.
Flake also compared Trump’s attacks on the media to Stalin.
“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. 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 said.
And Flake, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quoted the Mormon hymn “Oh Say, What Is Truth” to close out his speech.
“I will close by borrowing the words of an early adherent to my faith that 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.’”
You can read Flake’s entire speech at CNN.
Over the weekend, multiple news organizations reported that Flake would compare Trump’s attacks on the media to Stalin, according to the Deseret News.
Flake and Trump have had an ongoing war of words. In fact, Flake admitted in his retirement speech that he will work to speak out against Trump and the negative political atmosphere sweeping the nation.