Senator John McCain warned that suppressing the free press was "how dictators get started". The Arizona Republican, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, was responding to a tweet in which Trump accused the media of being "the enemy of the American people".
參議員麥肯警告，打壓新聞自由是「獨裁者動手的起點」。這位時常批評總統川普的亞利桑納州共和黨人，針對川普指控媒體是「美國人民公敵」的推文做出回應。
The international order established after World War Two was built in part on a free press, McCain said in an excerpt of an interview with NBC’s "Meet the Press".
二次世界大戰後的國際秩序，有一部分是建立在新聞自由的基礎上，麥肯在國家廣播公司（NBC）「會晤新聞界」的一段訪談節錄中說。
"I hate the press. I hate you especially," he told interviewer Chuck Todd. "But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital."
「我厭惡媒體，尤其痛恨你們。」他對主持人托德說，「但事實是我們需要你們，我們需要新聞自由，我們一定要有新聞自由，這至關重要。」
"If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started," he continued.
「若你希望維護我們所知道的民主政體，你必須有自由的、而且常常是立場敵對的媒體。沒有新聞自由，我擔心久而久之，我們將失去非常多的個人自由。這就是獨裁者怎麼開始的。」他繼續說。
"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. 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," McCain said.
「他們從壓制新聞媒體開始，換句話說，鞏固權力。當你回顧歷史，會發現獨裁者做的第一件事就是關閉媒體。我不是說川普總統正試圖成為獨裁者，我只是說，我們需要學到歷史教訓。」麥肯說。
Source article: http://iservice.ltn.com.tw/Service/english/english.php?engno=1082126&day=2017-03-01