Donald Trump has declared the media to be  the enemy,  but John McCain has a stark warning about Trump s most recent declaration of war:  suppressing the free press  is  how dictators get started. During a Sunday morning interview on Meet the Press, the Republican senator told NBC s Chuck Todd that if we  want to preserve democracy,  then we have to have a free press. Period. I hate the press. I hate you especially,  McCain joked.  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.  And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That s how dictators get started. Trump went on a Twitter rant and attacked the free press yet again on Friday, declaring that the media  is the enemy of the American people. The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017McCain said that while becoming a dictator isn t necessarily Trump s goal, he does think we need to look at history and learn from it to avoid making the same mistakes we have made in the past. And what history shows us is that dictators  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. Here s the video:Featured image via video screen capture