Donald Trump’s pick of twice-defeated Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake as director of the Voice of America seems ironic in that she’s the epitome of someone who has openly expressed disdain for the news industry.
Lake leading the VOA evokes an image of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, in which the news is altered to reflect the propaganda of the totalitarian leader, Big Brother.
In that novel, the suppressed populace learns the hard way that they better love Big Brother…or else. VOA, the U.S. government-funded international news network, is supposed to be objective and independent in reporting the news. With Lake at the helm, it can be expected to turn into the 2025 version of Big Brother, with Trump’s grandiose visions of himself being loved and worshipped by the entire world.
Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix, refused to accept that she lost the 2022 Arizona governor’s race as the Republican Party candidate, and she was also a 2020 election-denier. No doubt she will have the VOA parrot whatever falsehood or exaggeration Trump spews.
Lake has often espoused right-wing views of the media and has called journalists and journalism “fake news” and “monsters.” In a speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, she accused the media of having “spent the last eight years lying about President Donald Trump.”
Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a nonprofit watchdog journalism organization, called Trump’s selection of Lake “a nakedly partisan attack on journalistic values that demonstrates the level of fealty he expects from the press.”
Gertz said that during her gubernatorial campaign, Lake described reporters as “the right hand of the devil” and ran an ad in which she said “it’s time to take a sledgehammer to the mainstream media’s lies and propaganda.” On Election Day, Gertz said, Lake told journalists that after she won, she would be “your worst fricking nightmare.”
Trump himself attacked VOA while he was president in 2020, saying, “VOA too often speaks for America’s adversaries--not its citizens.”
Under Lake, it’s likely VOA will speak for Trump -- and Trump only -- not America’s citizens. Under Lake, once again, all the guardrails will be off as the agency turns into a Trumpian mouthpiece.
When I worked at the U.S. Information Agency (VOA’s sister agency), I witnessed how the news could be easily manipulated to align with former President Reagan’s conservative views. The then director, Charlie Wick, was constantly accused by USIA careerists and other critics of turning the agency into a right-wing propaganda machine, an allegation that he denied. But Wick said he would not stop promoting Reagan’s policies. USIA eventually was incorporated into the U.S. State Department in 1999.
The fix is in regarding Lake becoming the VOA director. News reports say Trump does not have total authority to make Lake the head of the VOA. That power goes to VOA’s parent authority, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. But whomever Trump picks to run the agency will obviously follow Trump’s orders to name Lake as VOA director, even as that agency’s full advisory board makes the final decision.
In what seems an odd twist, Trump’s MAGA supporters will not be the only ones glad to see Lake take the reins at VOA headquarters in Washington. Some members of Lake’s own Arizona Republican Party will also be delighted to see her gone from their state.
“When you're a two-time loser and you did worse the second time around (running for U.S. Senate), that's a clue that maybe the voters don't want you,” said Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in Arizona. “I think it clears space for the conservative but normal wing of the Republican Party in Arizona” to run candidates of its choice.
“She’s no longer Arizona’s problem. Now, she’s the world’s problem,” Marson added.
By picking Lake for VOA chief, it might also be a not-so-subtle Machiavellian tactic by Trump to get her out of the way, so Arizona Republicans can nominate someone else to run in the 2026 senatorial election against the Democratic Party nominee. Of course, using the term Machiavellian to describe Trump might be giving him too much credit. With the way Trump’s self-described “genius” brain operates, no doubt more chaos will ensue – which he likes to stir up.
It doesn’t take much to imagine that Lake will follow the Trumpian agenda, which echoes Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’s m.o., and also that of Orwell’s 1984, that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
With Lake in charge at VOA spreading America’s message to the world, the truth will be whatever our once and future Big Brother, Donald Trump, says it is.
Author Bio:
Eric Green, a Highbrow Magazine contributor, is a former newspaper reporter, U.S. congressional press aide, English-as-a-second-language teacher, and now a freelance writer in the Washington D.C. area. His articles have appeared in various newspapers and websites, including the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.
For Highbrow Magazine
Photo Credits: Gage Skidmore (Flickr, Creative Commons); Wikimedia Commons; Depositphotos.com.
