Kari Lake to lead Voice of America, Trump says

Niels Lesniewski, CQ-Roll Call on Dec 12, 2024

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WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor who has lost bids for Senate and for governor in Arizona, will be appointed to lead the Voice of America.

“I am pleased to announce that Kari Lake will serve as our next Director of the Voice of America,” Trump said in a statement. “She will be appointed by, and work closely with, our next head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who I will announce soon, to ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”

Lake, who lost Arizona’s open Senate race with 47.7 percent to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego’s 50.1 percent this year, ran behind Trump, who won the state with 52.2 percent of the vote, according to The Associated Press.

The intended appointment of Lake is a sign that the Trump administration again intends to assert its influence over the Voice of America, which runs the U.S. government’s international news services seeking to provide information in places where the media is subject to censorship.

During the first Trump administration, the U.S. Agency for Global Media under CEO Michael Pack drew bipartisan criticism from Capitol Hill for actions that appeared to undermine the mission of the U.S. global media services. That included requirements to publish editorial material favorable to the Trump administration.

Lake ran for governor in 2022 before her equally ill-fated Senate bid, and she challenged and denied the results of both her 2022 defeat and Trump’s 2020 defeat. A post-election survey from Noble Predictive Insights in Arizona found that Lake’s favorability was underwater, with a 53 percent disapproval rating — and asked voters why that was the case.

“[I]t’s interesting to see just how negative of an impact Lake’s election denials have had for her — even though Trump’s election denial didn’t impact him in the same ways,” Mike Noble, the founder and CEO of the polling firm, said in a Dec. 4 statement with the release of the post-election numbers.

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