"I hate the press," the Arizona Republican sarcastically told NBC News' Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press." "I hate you especially. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital."
“If you want to preserve -- I'm very serious now -- if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press," McCain said in the interview. "And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started
"They get started by suppressing free press, in other words, a consolidation of power -- when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press," McCain said. "And 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."
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Trump is bad news for John McCain and anyone else who cares about American democracy. McCain is finally realizing that. This is good news for us. McCain is so old, he may never run for office again. He is also one of the few Republicans with patriotism and a conscience, however misguided his views of how best to implement those may be. These factors may make him particularly likely to be the 51st vote against some truly evil Trump schemes. McCain plus Collins plus Murkowski plus all Democratic Senators could equal 51 votes against something even more heinous than what the Senate has already passed. At this point, we need all the help we can get. McCain will be a Senator for at least 6 more years, so all we can do is try to flip him away from the Dark Side on any Senate votes we can. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. He’s not going to vote with us on most issues, but he may join us to start investigations of Trump’s illegal activities, oppose Trump’s efforts to destroy American democracy, and/or oppose Trump’s efforts to do completely nonsensical stupid things in foreign policy.