Outgoing Republican Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) on Wednesday warned of the dangers of accepting the term “fake news” and suggested that Trump’s presidency could eventually lead to the emergence of a “Hitler-like character.”
“I want to be clear and explicit that I am not likening Trump to Hitler, but the forces at play could lead to a future Hitler-like character if we don’t watch out,” he wrote on Facebook in a farewell statement. “It must be remembered that another thing that Benjamin Franklin said was that he who trades his freedom for security, deserves neither. Indeed, how true.”
“As a country, we have to get back to math that works. We are riding on the Titanic as it now stands. This will end tragically for all of us, if we don’t turn our spending habits around. Paul Kennedy wrote an interesting book a few years ago titled “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” and again the dynamics that he talked about were once again simply tied to math,” he continued.
“We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater with regard to institutions and traditions that have served our country well for more than 200 years. If we have no faith in our institutions and the people that populate them, our system breaks down.
“We must embrace the truth, and it will set us free. Open political systems cannot survive in a post-truth world. While none of us are perfect, and there will always be grey around some areas of truth, we cannot accept chronic streams of distruth. If everything is subjective, there is nothing to debate. If, on the other hand, there is objective truth, and I can approach it from the right while you approach it from a perspective more to the left, then we can join in debate. Without truth out in the middle, there is no starting point and the reasoned debate that an open political system relies on for its survival is strangled and dissipates.”
The relationship between Sanford and Trump has been fraught for months and Trump’s Twitter attacks against the incumbent congressman helped sink his reelection bid during the primaries earlier this year.
