Voice of America (VOA) may have been used to broadcastDonald Trump’s message to Iranians in Farsi during weekend military strikes, the president’s senior adviser toldCongresson Wednesday, revealing how the crumbling, traditionally independent news service is possibly functioning as a conduit for presidential messaging.
Kari Lake, Trump’s handpicked choice to oversee the US Agency for Global Media, told theHouseforeign affairs committee that VOA crews worked on Saturday to deliver Trump’s message as bombing operations were under way.
“I’m very proud to say that when President Trump, when the bombings happened over the weekend, on Saturday, when President Trump started to speak, we had a crew in on Saturday delivering President Trump’s message to the people ofIranin Farsi,” Lake testified.
While VOA has historically served US interests globally, the comments from Lake, a former longtime television anchor who unsuccessfully ran as the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for Arizona’s governorship, then its Senate seat, suggest a more immediate, personal form of presidential communication than the service’s traditional role of providing broader US policy context and news.
Lake’s testimony also came just days after the White House authorized thetermination of 639 employeesat VOA on Friday. The layoffs represent the final phase of Trump’s assault on the broadcasting service, which has eliminated 1,400 positions since March and reduced the agency to just 250 employees across the entire US Agency for Global Media.
VOA, founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, reportedlyreached 360 million people weeklyacross dozens of languages as a major part of the US cold war broadcasting strategy to push American-centric ideas to populations under authoritarian rule.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Lake argued that Trump wants to completely eliminate VOA as an independent agency, claiming it “does not know how to manage” and is disrespectful to American taxpayers.
“They shouldn’t believe it. And I think this is why President Trump wants to eliminate the agency. The agency itself is not needed,” Lake said when asked why Congress should trust VOA.
Lake made unsubstantiated claims that the agency had allowed “dangerous people into our country” through allegedly improper security screenings of 1,500 employees, telling the House foreign affairs committee that intelligence officials had warned the agency was “freelancing on your security screenings”.
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She suggested folding VOA’s remaining functions back into the state department, where it operatedin the 1940s and early 1950sduring what she called its “glory days” when there were “guardrails on what the story of America was being told” and it wasn’t “anti-American”.
The agency’s demolition began in March when Trump signed an executive order targeting federal agencies he branded as bloated bureaucracy. In March, the White House issued a statement calling VOA “propaganda” and “leftist” and dubbed it “the Voice of Radical America”.
Three VOA journalists leading legal challenges against its near-shuttering said the cuts “spell the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world”.