Sen. Jeff Flake, R- Ariz., denied Monday that he is comparing President Trump to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a speech he's planning to criticize president's attacks on the press.
"I am in no way comparing President Trump to Josef Stalin," Flake told CNN International's Christiane Amanpour. "Stalin was a killer," he said of the Soviet dictator. "Our president is not."
"But it just puzzles me as to why you would use a phrase that is so loaded, and that has such deeper meaning — the press being the enemy of the people," Flake said. "So that is a big concern."
Flake is expected to say it is telling how Trump "uses words infamously spoken" by Stalin while referring to his political opponents. The speech is expected to come on Wednesday, before Trump hands out the "Fake News Awards" on Wednesday night.
"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 will say, according to the Washington Post. "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."
