What is Voice of America? Trump wants Kari Lake to run the global news network he wanted to “smash.”

Donald Trump has defied an international press agency and picked his own nominee for his publicly funded flagship news network.

Trump wants Kari Lake – the failed Republican candidate for Arizona governor and US Senate who promised to be the media’s “worst nightmare” – to lead Voice of America, the country’s oldest international broadcaster Reached millions of people around the world.

During his first term, Trump and his allies were accused of trying to manipulate the network and the agency that runs it to use them as his own propaganda machine, channeling channels that promote the free flow of information around the world built-in channels to transform messaging platforms from the White House.

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The Voice of America director will be selected by the appointed head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independently run diplomatic arm of the government that monitors state-backed channels that broadcast in countries where press freedom is restricted and news is difficult to access.

By law, VOA’s director can only be appointed or removed by majority vote of a bipartisan panel working with the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

But Trump announced he wanted Lake to lead the network before even naming a candidate for the agency. He said Lake “will serve” as the network’s director.

Lake will “ensure that American values ​​of freedom and freedom are spread FAIRLY and ACCURATELY around the world, in contrast to the lies spread by the fake news media,” Trump announced on December 11th.

Trump’s first administration marked a tumultuous and toxic time for employees at the agency, led by Steve Bannon’s ally Michael Pack, who fired staff, disbanded advisory boards, replaced positions with Trump loyalists, denied visa extensions for foreign journalists and refused to report according to reports.

Trump himself said on VOA in 2020: “The things they say are disgusting to our country.”

An uncredited White House statement at the time accused VOA of “amplifying Beijing’s propaganda” through its coverage of Wuhan’s COVID-19 lockdown model and claimed that “VOA too often speaks for America’s adversaries – not its citizens.” .”

Two months before President Joe Biden took office, Pack replaced acting VOA chief Elez Biberaj – a journalist with the broadcaster for more than 40 years – with former diplomat Robert Reilly, who has come under intense scrutiny for his views on LGBT+ people and Islam was taken.

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Reilly had also pushed for VOA to be used to promote U.S. politics rather than providing a platform for independent media to a global audience, as required by law, raising concerns that Trump and his allies would try to take over the U.S.’s global news network to turn the country into a propaganda wing for its administration.

VOA was first founded in 1942 to broadcast news, music and domestic programming in Allied-conquered territories during World War II, and then expanded throughout Europe and around the world with pro-democracy content to counter local propaganda and disinformation during the Cold War War and after counteract the digital age for a largely non-American audience.

With funding from the US Agency for Global Media, VOA produces digital, radio and television content in more than 40 languages, reaching more than 300 million people weekly, the network reported in 2022.

Biden named Amanda Bennett as the agency’s current head and Michael Abramowitz was sworn in as VOA’s current director earlier this year.

If Abramowitz is fired and Lake is installed as VOA director, she will oversee a nearly $300 million budget with more than 2,000 employees worldwide, including hundreds of journalists.

During the campaign, Lake derided reporters as “monsters,” called the media “fake news” and “repulsive,” and suggested journalists should be extradited to Afghanistan. “Let’s defund the press, let’s defund the media,” she said during her campaign for governor.

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When he took over the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Pack quickly fired the leadership, claiming without evidence that his predecessors had “ignored common national security protocols and key government personnel practices,” leaving the agencies vulnerable to espionage. He claimed that VOA “is a great place to plant a foreign spy.”

VOA staff said so The Independent At the time, Pack’s actions posed a threat to journalists in countries where their lives could be in danger, and his focus on pursuing political power and personal vendettas was to “break down the firewall” to keep political activists out of newsrooms .

VOA’s “firewall” is enshrined in law under the U.S. International Broadcasting Act and “prohibits interference by U.S. government officials in the objective, independent reporting of news.”

Employees later filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking an injunction preventing Pack from making personnel decisions. A judge granted the request, finding that “the First Amendment prohibits Mr. Pack and his team from attempting to take control of these journalistic media outlets, from investigating their journalists for alleged ‘bias,’ and from attempting to suppress their journalists.” “To influence or control report content,” said her lawyer Lee Crain.

An Office of Special Counsel report later found that Pack had illegally breached these editorial firewalls, abused his authority, and engaged in gross mismanagement and misuse of funds.

Lake, meanwhile, was a television news anchor in Phoenix for nearly 30 years until she left her job at a local Fox affiliate in 2021 after making a series of controversial statements on social media, including conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and accusations of a campaign that advocated for better pay for teachers as an excuse to legalize marijuana.

She ran for governor in 2022 against Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs, who defeated her Republican rival by around 17,000 votes. Lake refused to concede, echoing Trump’s election denial and ultimately failing to overturn her defeat in court.

Lake then lost a Senate race in 2024 to Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego, who defeated Lake by more than 80,000 votes.