President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he has appointed Kari Lake as director of the government-funded Voice of America, the nation’s largest international broadcaster.
The move comes after the 55-year-old Lake lost her Arizona Senate bid to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in November.
“She will be appointed by and work closely with our next head of the U.S. Global Media Agency, which I will announce soon,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix, is a fierce Trump loyalist who also lost her 2022 campaign for Arizona governor. During her campaigns, she often repeated Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Voice of America, part of the US Agency for Global Media, broadcasts international news in 49 languages on radio, television and online to an audience of an estimated 354 million people per week, according to its website.
It first began broadcasting in 1942. It has approximately 2,000 employees and an annual budget of approximately $260 million. USAGM is considered an independent federal agency.
In a social media post Wednesday evening, Lake wrote that she was “honored” to have been nominated for the role, adding that “under my leadership, VOA will excel in its mission of chronicling America’s achievements around the world.”
Lake’s nomination must still be confirmed by the Senate.
During Trump’s first term in 2020, USAGM’s editorial independence came into doubt after Trump appointed Michael Pack – a conservative filmmaker and close ally of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon – as CEO.
Suit then has made the decision not to renew the visas of ten VOA journalists and dozens of others working at networks under USAGM, raising concerns from both members of Congress and the international community about the potential of diminished editorial independence for the VOA news channel .
John Lippman is currently acting director of VOA, a position he has held since October 2023, while Amanda Bennett is CEO of USAGM.
Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.
