News and Commentary

Jeff Flake Claims Biden ‘More Conservative’ Than Trump On Issues Like Freedom Of Press. Here’s What Biden Supported As VP.

   DailyWire.com
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) (L) participates in a reenacted swearing-in with his wife Cheryl Flake (C) and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in the Old Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol January 3, 2013 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona now claims Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is more conservative than President Donald Trump, a Republican, when it comes to “preserving institutions.”

Speaking with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Flake explained why he is supporting Biden over Trump in November’s general elections.

“Conservatives believe in preserving institutions, to preserve what we know works and the institutions of American democracy — our freedom of the press, for example, or separation of powers, an independent judiciary,” Flake said. “The president has shown that he little understands or little appreciates these institutions.”

Flake went on to explain that Biden is the first Democrat the former Arizona senator will be voting for in a presidential election.

“I’m not pretending Joe Biden is as conservative as I am on fiscal issues and whatnot, but on those important issues of American democracy, frankly he’s more conservative than the president is,” Flake added.

It is odd for Flake to suggest Biden would preserve America’s institutions, considering what Biden accepted during the Obama administration when he was vice president.

The Obama administration spied on journalists and tried its best to ignore Fox News. In fact, as The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board wrote in September 2018, Obama’s White House communications director Anita Dunn admitted to The New York Times that the administration would “treat [Fox] the way we would treat an opponent.” In 2013, former executive editor of The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. wrote that the Obama “administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.”

In 2015, James Risen, who at the time was a reporter for the Times, said the Obama administration was “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”

“Some specifics? Obama’s administration prosecuted three times as many cases targeting whistle-blowers and leakers than all previous administrations combined. It said there was probable cause that a Fox News reporter was a ‘co-conspirator’ in a plot against the U.S. government because of his attempts to gather information about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. It secretly scoured the phone records of nearly 100 Associated Press reporters and editors for two months, which an editorial in The New York Times characterized as ‘a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.’ And in 2014, according to AP, the Obama administration broke its own record for censoring government files or refusing to provide files sought under the Freedom of Information Act,” the Union-Tribune editorial board wrote.

Trump has merely criticized the press verbally, including calling them the “enemy of the people.”

Flake did not offer any examples for how Trump has undermined the separation of powers or an independent judiciary. The Obama administration stacked the courts with liberal justices, while the Trump administration is doing so with conservative justices. The Obama administration, however, undermined Americans’ core right to due process by demanding colleges and universities find more students responsible for sexual assault, leading schools to adopt policies that eviscerated due process. The Obama administration cheered these schools on and insisted anyone who disagreed was a rape apologist. Biden himself was the biggest cheerleader for these policies and stated he would overturn Trump administration requirements that schools provide basic due process.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  Jeff Flake Claims Biden ‘More Conservative’ Than Trump On Issues Like Freedom Of Press. Here’s What Biden Supported As VP.