Arizona lawmaker Jeff Flake compared Donald Trump to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on Wednesday, delivering a blistering attack on the president to a nearly empty U.S. Senate chamber.

The Republican has become one of Trump's favorite targets, earning a presidential nickname – 'Jeff Flakey' – since his impending retirement has freed him to openly castigate the White House on several fronts.

'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,' Flake said, citing a Trump tweet in which he branded five news outlets 'the enemy of the American people.'  

Flake said that 'so fraught with malice was the phrase "enemy of the people" that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of "annihilating such individuals" who disagreed with the supreme leader.'

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Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, said Wednesday on the Senate floor that President Donald Trump's attacks on the media put him in the same category as Soviet despot Joseph Stalin