“I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history,” Arizona senator says
Republican Senator Arizona Senator told NBC News in a clip released Saturday (above) that President Donald Trump’s most recent attack on the media is an example of “how dictators get started.”Â
Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press,” asked McCain about Trump’s tweet Friday, in which the president declared that the media is “the enemy of the American people.”Â
“If you want to preserve Democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press, and without it I’m afraid we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started,” McCain responded.Â
“They get started by suppressing a free press,” he added. “In other words, a consolidation of power, when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do, is shut down the press. I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history.”Â
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