Romney: "Trump Hurting Democracy and Freedom"

Romney says Trump calling news media 'enemy of the people' hurts democracy, freedom

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Mitt Romney can’t "conceive of thinking or saying" the news media is an enemy as President Donald Trump continues to do, according to an essay he posted on his campaign website Thursday.

Romney wrote that someone asked him at a recent campaign event whether he would “take action to shut down ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and the New York Times.”

"When I responded ‘of course not,’ and that, in fact, I would do everything in my power to preserve freedom of speech, the person persisted by arguing that these outlets purvey fake news," the Republican U.S. Senate candidate said.

In his essay, Romney referenced a Trump tweet this week that said: "There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People … "

Every president, Romney said, has endured stories that were inaccurate and chaffed at one or more news publications.

"But no American president has ever before vilified the American press or one of its professional outlets as an 'Enemy of the People,'" he wrote.

"As a political tactic, it may be brilliant, but it comes with a large cost to the cause of freedom," he said.

Denigrating the media, he said, diminishes an institution that is critical to democracy, freedom, the cause of freedom abroad and national security. The work of a free press, even if biased, is essential to the preservation of the country, Romney said. The media, he said is "very much our friend."

"America is indebted as a democratic nation to the free press for truths it has uncovered, for truth it has disseminated, and for falsehoods it has repudiated," he said.