Donald Trump’s MAGA media solider Kari Lake is remaking the government-backed Voice of America in the president‘s image by bringing in the far-right One America News network to program its newsfeed.
In a late-night post on X on Tuesday, Lake said the United States Agency for Global Media would partner with OAN to distribute its shows on VOA and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting’s Radio Martí, which broadcasts shows in Spanish to Cuba. The far-right news outlet will provide its shows for free, she wrote.
“This is an enormous benefit to the American taxpayer, who is the sole-source of funding for USAGM’s news outlets, which broadcast only to international audiences,” Lake wrote. “OAN is one of the few family-owned American media networks left in the United States. We are grateful for their generosity.”
VOA’s White House bureau chief Patsy Widaksuswara and journalist Jessica Jerreat, who are leading a lawsuit demanding the government restore the organization’s core functions, said Lake’s announcement undercut its purpose.
“Congress mandated VOA to report reliable and authoritative news, not to outsource its journalism to outlets aligned with the president’s agenda,” they wrote. “VOA already has talented and professional journalists ready to tell America’s story in line with the VOA Charter, but we are blocked from our own newsroom. That is why we will continue fighting for our rights in court.”
OAN is known for its misleading content in support of Trump, including bolstering his false claims that he won the 2020 election. The network settled multiple lawsuits brought by voting software companies against the network and one of its top hosts Chanel Rion.
A former Dominion Voting Systems executive had accused Rion and the network of promoting claims that Dominion flipped the 2020 election, citing Rion’s “Dominion-izing the Vote” program. Rion and the network settled in 2023.
The network, founded in 2013 by Robert Herring, also hired former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz as a host last year after he withdrew his nomination to become Trump’s attorney general.
The move came as Lake, who serves as USGAM’s senior adviser, has sought to dismantle the agency she was tasked to lead. She said in March she would follow Trump’s executive order to minimize the agency down to its statutory limits, putting most of its staff on administrative leave and accusing VOA of “massive national security violations.”
“This agency is not salvageable,” she wrote in March.
Since then, VOA journalists have sued to force Lake to re-hire them and allow them to fulfill their statutory purpose. A federal court ruled last week that the agency must resume its programming, but an appeals court stayed an order requiring the Trump administration to restore the agency’s funding for its sister networks, including Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
VOA has since re-hired some journalists, according to NPR.
“In my current role as Senior Advisor to USAGM, I don’t have editorial control over the content of VOA and OCB programming, but I can ensure our outlets have reliable and credible options as they work to craft their reporting and news programs,” Lake wrote on X.
