This is full on fascism
Donald Trump has scrapped his original plan for Voice of America (VOA), deciding it wasn’t extreme and anti-American enough. In December, I wrote about Trump’s push to install election denier and conspiracy theorist Kari Lake as the VOA’s head. That was alarming enough, given Lake’s open hostility toward the press and the truth. However, now that Trump’s second term is underway, it looks like he has decided to go full-fascist with VOA, dismantling it—while Russia and China cheer him along.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order dismantling seven agencies, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which is VOA’s parent. The current VOA director, Michael Abramowitz, stated over the weekend that this put “virtually the entire staff” of about 1,300 employees, including himself, on leave.
Once again, Trump has used his pen as a wrecking ball, effectively shutting down the network, which served a weekly audience of over 354 million people in almost 50 languages. Instead, people across the world who try to tune in are likely to hear music, at best. Even worse, some outlets that used VOA programming will run without any U.S. contributions to counter content aired by Russia and China state media, according to a report from The New York Times.
Not surprisingly, certain places around the globe are celebrating the dismantling of VOA. In China, the state media cheered the muzzling of the “lie factory” that has reported on human rights abuses, censorship, and crackdowns on free speech in that country. Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia’s state media outlet RT, said, “Today is a holiday… This is an awesome decision by Trump! We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.” In effect, by removing VOA from the equation, Trump has empowered Russia and China to press forward with even less accountability.
Trump’s action isn’t simply about shutting down a media outlet or removing wasteful spending in government. It’s yet another manifestation of his autocratic desire to control the truth so that he can write and rewrite history as he pleases. Weakening democracy and pleasing Russia and China is not America First.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month