Trump's Attacks on Media Embolden Authoritarians, Flake Says

The Year in Fake News

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President Donald Trump is emboldening authoritarian leaders around the world by dismissing media coverage of his administration as "fake news," Arizona Republican Jeff Flake said in a Senate floor speechBloomberg Terminal Wednesday.

"It is past time to stop excusing or ignoring or worse, endorsing these attacks on the truth," Flake said. The president’s tweet in February 2017 that news outlets are "the enemy of the American people" uses words "infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies," said the senator, who has been a vocal critic of the president in recent months.