On Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) will return to the Senate floor to criticize Trump and White House for their treatment of the press, ahead of the president's planned "fake news" awards. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Flake compares Trump's treatment of press to Stalin's

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that President Donald Trump's declaration that media is "the enemy of the people" is a throwback to Josef Stalin that should have no place in political discourse.

"I'm saying he borrowed that phrase," Flake told MSNBC's Kasie Hunt of Trump's choice of words. "It was popularized by Josef Stalin, used by Mao as well — enemy of the people. It should be noted that Nikita Khrushchev who followed Stalin, forbade its use, saying that was too loaded and that it maligned a whole group or class of people, and it shouldn't be done.


"I don't think that we should be using a phrase that's been rejected as too loaded by a Soviet dictator."

One of the Republican Party's most vociferous critics of Trump, Flake decided not to run for reelection after his popularity dove in Arizona, in part due to his criticism of the president, which he expanded on his book "Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle." Taking to the Senate floor to announce his decision to retire in October last year, Flake warned his colleagues to never adjust their tone to what is set at the top and to "never ever accept the deadly sundering of our country."

On Wednesday, Flake will return to the Senate floor to excoriate Trump and White House for their treatment of the press, ahead of Trump's planned "fake news" awards. The goal of the speech, Flake said, is to nudge the president back to the right form of behavior when it comes to dealing with the press.

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"We can't just retreat into camps like we're doing," Flake told Hunt on "Kasie DC." "People need to stand up and say this is not right. This is not normal."

According to excerpts, Flake will say on Wednesday that 2017 was "a year which saw the truth — objective, empirical, evidence-based truth —more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government."

He will add that the White House engaged in an "unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted."

Addressing Trump's favored "fake news" insult, Flake will caution that "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."

"Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of U.S.-based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth," Flake will say. "To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to commitment and their sacrifice."