Voice of America aired Trump's message to Iranian people during US bombings
Voice of America (VOA) may have been used to broadcast Donald Trump's message to Iranians in Farsi during weekend military strikes, the president's senior adviser told Congress on 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 the House foreign 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 of Iran in Farsi,' Lake testified.
Related: Trump administration almost totally dismantles Voice of America with latest terminations
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 the termination of 639 employees at 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, reportedly reached 360 million people weekly across 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'.
She suggested folding VOA's remaining functions back into the state department, where it operated in the 1940s and early 1950s during 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'.
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