[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 169 (Thursday, October 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6790-S6791]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Guardians of Democracy

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, there are no more consequential words 
spoken than those spoken by the President of the United States.
  The words of a President reverberate around the world like no other 
world leader's, and as attentive as Americans are to what our President 
says, the rest of the world is probably paying even closer attention, 
as it is often their fate that hangs in the balance when our President 
speaks.
  Americans can ignore certain utterances from the President. The rest 
of the world often has no such luxury.
  Another audience for Presidential utterances is the despot, the 
strongman, the authoritarian, and the dictator. From this President, 
that horrible focus group has received a great deal of sustenance.
  In fact, the oppressors of the world have taken to parroting some of 
their favorite lines from the White House. Anything critical of their 
regimes has become ``fake news,'' and the press is the ``enemy of the 
people,'' just to name two of our President's greatest hits.
  As I mentioned in this Chamber in January of this year, a State 
official in Myanmar recently said:

       There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.

  He was, of course, referring to the persecuted ethnic group.
  In February of last year, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad brushed 
off an Amnesty International report that some 13,000 people had been 
murdered in his military prisons by saying:


[[Page S6791]]


  

       You can forge anything these days. We are living in a fake 
     news era.

  In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has complained of being 
``demonized'' by ``fake news.'' Last year, according to a news report, 
with our President ``laughing by his side,'' Duterte called reporters 
``spies.''
  In July 2017, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro complained to the 
Russian propaganda outlet that the world media had ``spread lots of 
false versions, lots of lies'' about his country, adding: ``This is 
what we call `fake news' today, isn't it?'' And on and on. This 
feedback loop is appalling.
  We are in an era where the authoritarian impulse is reasserting 
itself to challenge free people and free societies everywhere. We 
cannot give convenient language to authoritarians, language that is 
used against their own people.
  Now, with the apparent brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, 
some of the real enemies of the people and enemies of freedom seem to 
have taken license to eliminate a man their regime viewed as a threat.
  We need to know exactly what happened in that Saudi consulate in 
Turkey earlier this month. Put bluntly, we cannot do business with the 
Saudi Government if they directed or were complicit in the murder of 
Jamal Khashoggi. We in this body had best be very careful about who the 
enemies of the people are and who they are not.
  The free press is the guardian of democracy and the enemy of tyrants, 
and the man or woman who speaks from behind the Presidential Seal needs 
to remind the country and the world of this truism again and again, as 
long as the world will listen.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.