Report: Sen. Jeff Flake to hold floor speeches on importance of facts, truth
Nov 30, 2017, 5:01 AM | Updated: 10:52 am
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
PHOENIX — Sen. Jeff Flake is reportedly planning to hold a series of speeches on the Senate floor that will address the importance of facts and the truth.
According to NPR, the Arizona senator said he will talk about the “critical importance of facts and truth to American democracy.”
“These speeches aren’t necessarily just on the president, but on certain issues,” Flake told the radio station. “The first one will be on the need to have shared facts that we all agree on.”
Flake first revealed his intentions in an interview with the New York Times, which reported that President Donald Trump has questioned the authenticity of a tape on which he was caught making vulgar comments about women.
The Times said Trump first began “raising the prospect…that it may not have been him on the tape after all” as a president-elect, after initially acknowledging it was him and apologizing for his comments.
The paper also said that Trump is still questioning the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and claiming that he lost the popular vote in the 2016 election due to widespread voter fraud.
Flake said he wants to hold these floor speeches because he feels it is important to address these issues.
“Those are things that I think are empirically settled, and I think it’s important that we recognize it as such. And democracy really depends on having shared facts, and I’ll be addressing some of those issues,” Flake said to NPR.
“It is damaging to a democracy if you say things are fake news that aren’t, and portray facts as something else,” he added. “I do think that it’s damaging to a democracy, I do.”
The radio station said Flake’s office did not clarify when he would begin those series of speeches, but said it would not be this week.
This is not the first time Flake has raised concerns with the president’s way of governing: The Arizona senator’s book, Conscience of a Conservative, addressed the Republican Party’s rifts and downfalls that have been highlighted in the age of Trump.
Flake is also no stranger to speaking out against the president: The two have exchanged digital jabs over social media multiple times.
