Voice of America will be led by Kari Lake, according to Trump. He assaulted it in his first term.
According to President-elect Donald Trump, Kari Lake, a former local television news anchor who is now a member of the MAGA, will be in charge of Voice of America, a federally funded broadcaster.
The move, if successful, would place a loyalist in charge of a news organization that Trump tried to subjugate to his appointee in the last year of his first term. During his first term, Trump officials attempted to deprive the network and its parent agency of their independence, taking steps that were later determined to be unlawful and, in one instance, unconstitutional.
However, Trump lacks the power to appoint Lake on his own; the appointment is subject to a bipartisan board that reports to the parent agency’s chief executive.
According to President-elect Donald Trump, Kari Lake, a former local television news anchor who is now a member of the MAGA, will be in charge of Voice of America, a federally funded broadcaster.
The move, if successful, would place a loyalist in charge of a news organization that Trump tried to subjugate to his appointee in the last year of his first term. During his first term, Trump officials attempted to deprive the network and its parent agency of their independence, taking steps that were later determined to be unlawful and, in one instance, unconstitutional.
However, Trump lacks the power to appoint Lake on his own; the appointment is subject to a bipartisan board that reports to the parent agency’s chief executive.
Voice of America (VOA), which is funded by Congress, operates in nearly 50 languages and reaches an estimated 354 million people weekly across the globe. It is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting.
Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social that Lake will be appointed by and work closely with the incoming head of that agency, “who I will announce soon.”
A free press is central to VOA’s mission: It aims to bring unfettered reporting to places that do not have it, and show political debate and dissent in the U.S. even when that reflects critically on the administration in power.
Trump’s White House took the unprecedented step in spring 2020 of openly attacking VOA in public statements over its perceived failures to explicitly blame the Chinese government for the pandemic.