The Trump-DOGE onslaught continues against fraud and waste in government and taxpayer-funded anti-American propaganda, much to the consternation of liberals—who keep putting on performative displays of “resistance”—and judges, who keep stepping in with their apparent efforts to stop every last one of the president’s initiatives.
But that’s not stopping this administration, and on Saturday, they announced they’re nuking Voice of America and other propaganda outlets funded by you, the taxpayer.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave.
On Friday night, shortly after Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba.
On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate whom Trump named a senior adviser to the agency, posted on X that employees should check their email. That coincided with notices going out placing Voice of America staff on paid administrative leave.
To the left: u chose to engage in ideological capture of institutions. The right has no choice other than razing those institutions. We would have taken neutrality. You chose to use the neutral institutions to advance progressivism. This is you losing now. https://t.co/4FMB9gy1Vl
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 16, 2025
More–> Kari Lake Will Also Have a Role in the Incoming Trump Administration
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Over at National Public Radio, they were mournful in their coverage, knowing that they’re probably soon going to get (deservedly) gutted by Team Trump themselves:
“I am deeply saddened that for the 1st time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” the network’s director, Michael Abramowitz, said in a statement posted on his personal Facebook account. “VOA needs thoughtful reform and we have made progress in that regard. But today’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission.” He wrote that he was among those 1,300 journalists, producers and support staff put on leave.
Grant Turner, the former chief financial officer at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, called it “Bloody Saturday” for the agency and its networks.
🚨REPORT: The Voice of America has put all of its journalists on administrative leave, and the agency is fully shut down.
The VOA employees were claiming that they were having to engage in “self-censorship on Trump policies,” but is that true?
The reality is that VOA was filled… pic.twitter.com/1huATdNDgO
— Walter Curt (@WCdispatch_) March 15, 2025
The reality is that VOA was filled with anti-Trump journalists, and like every DC agency, it needs to be fully gutted. It pretends to champion truth and democracy, but it’s just a propaganda machine pushing far-left ideals across the world.
The White House has a different view than NPR, of course, and said in an official email:
President Donald J. Trump’s executive order on Friday will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.
Dan Robinson, a 34-year veteran of Voice of America and its former White House correspondent, wrote last year: “I have monitored the agency’s bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media. It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement.”
The email cited multiple examples of the leftist bias that infects VOA. Here are a few:
- Voice of America’s management told staff not to call Hamas and its members terrorists, “except when quoting statements.”
- Daily Caller: “Multiple Voice Of America Reporters Have Posted Anti-Trump Content On Social Media”
- “Multiple Voice of America (VOA) reporters have repeatedly posted anti-Trump comments on their professional Twitter accounts, despite a social media policy requiring employee impartiality on social media platforms.”
- Voice of America: “What Is ‘White Privilege’ and Whom Does It Help?”
- “Today, the phrase is used passionately and widely in the context of racial profiling — police treatment of people as criminal suspects based on their race.”
- In September 2019, the Daily Caller reported that Voice of America employed a Russian anti-U.S. propagandist.
- In May 2019, Voice of America fired reporters for their roles in canceling a broadcast midstream after pressure from the Chinese government.
- In March 2019, Voice of America ran a segment about transgender migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
Like NPR, VOA arguably had a valid purpose and was created to promote American values. All they had to do was stay neutral and not become a mouthpiece for the progressives, but they failed in that mission. They have only themselves to blame for their current woes.
