President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he intends to appoint Kari Lake to serve as the next director at government-funded news broadcaster Voice of America.
In that role, Lake will work with the incoming chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which overseas the operations of Voice of America, Office of Uba Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Hurra and a number of other U.S.-backed international broadcasters.
In a statement posted on his media platform Truth Social, Trump noted that Lake was a “beloved news anchor in Arizona,” where she worked for Fox-owned station KSAZ-TV (Channel 10) in Phoenix before leaving the outlet to run for governor.
Lake lost the gubernatorial election in 2020, only to stay in the spotlight by making a number of unsubstantiated claims about the outcome of that race and the 2020 presidential election. She ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate earlier this year, but lost that race as well.
At Voice of America, Trump expects Lake to “ensure that the American values of freedom and liberty are broadcast around the world fairly and accurately,” he wrote on Truth Social.
During his first term as president, Trump clashed with editors at Voice of America, accusing them of spreading “Chinese propaganda” during the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) health pandemic. Among other things, Trump criticized the outlet for relying in part on data released by Chinese government officials on the number of illnesses associated with COVID-19 there, and for airing a video that showed a celebration after the city of Wuhan lifted its quarantine. (Wuhan is widely believed to be where the COVID-19 virus originated.)
At the time, Voice of America was led by Amanda Bennett, a former news editor with the Wall Street Journal and whose career included similar roles at Bloomberg News and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Unlike China, VOA has stuck to verifiable facts, including publishing numerous articles in Mandarin, English and other languages that outed China’s initial secrecy keeping information of the initial outbreak from the world,” Bennett said in response to Trump’s attacks on the outlet. “VOA has thoroughly debunked much of the information coming from the Chinese government and government-controlled media.”
Last year, NPR reported that Trump’s pick to lead USAGM held an off-the-books meeting with an employee whether workers at the agency and at VOA should be dismissed based on certain political beliefs.
A handwritten list included remarks like “openly despises Trump and Republicans” next to one worker’s name, NPR said, while another worker was listed next to the words “hates Republicans.”
A report released by the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Inspector General found that the head of USAGM under the first Trump administration “repeatedly abused the powers of his office, broke laws and regulations, and engaged in gross mismanagement,” NPR reported, citing the report itself.
