"Jeff Flake's 20 most damning lines about Donald Trump's assault on the press"
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large  

Updated 7:17 PM ET, Wed January 17, 2018

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/politics/jeff-flake-trump-press-speech-analysis/index.html

"Critics have cast Flake as something of a sore loser -- a Republican whose strong anti-Trump stance lost him the confidence of voters in his state. (Flake announced he would retire at the end of this year after a series of polls suggested he would have a very difficult time winning a second term.)
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Flake's speech was the result of his "poll numbers," adding that the Arizona senator served as a "mouthpiece" for Cuba's regime by recently making a trip to that country."

OK, but what did Flake SAY?  Read and recognize his truth, spoken to a deceitful "power" like Tweety.

1. "For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last."

2. "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."

3. "It was the year in which 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."

4. "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."

5. "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."

6. "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."

7. "Mr. President, so powerful is the presidency that the damage done by the sustained attack on the truth will not be confined to the President's time in office."

8. "Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful -- in fact, we question the powerful most ardently"

9. "No matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality."

10. "A major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don't."

11. "No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions."

12. "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."

13. "2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it."

14. "Together, united in the 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."

15. "To be very clear, to call the Russia matter a 'hoax' -- as the President has many times -- is a falsehood."

16. "Every word that a president utters projects American values around the world."

17. "Between the mighty and the modest, truth is the great leveler."

18. "Not only has the past year seen an American president borrow despotic language to refer to the free press, but it seems he has in turn inspired dictators and authoritarians with his own language."

19. "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 cause for profound alarm, and spur to action."

20. "If we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost."

Tweety promotes a divided country, enables tribalism as we have never seen in this country, and will do serious damage to American ideals and reputation unless more people courageously stand up to him.