In what must be understood as a propaganda program designed to normalize not only fascist ideology, but also specifically pro-Trump regime and cult of personality messaging, noted liar. conspiracy theorist and failed Senatorial candidate Kari Lake has now announced Voice of America will be carrying the One America News feed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/07/voice-america-one-america-news

Embattled Voice of America to use newsfeed from hard-right network

"Kari Lake, a special adviser to the body that oversees the government-funded VoA, announced on X that One America News (OAN), which was sued by voting machine companies for promoting claims of election fraud, will provide “newsfeed and video service”.

“Every day I look for ways to save American taxpayers money. Bringing in OAN as a video/news source does both,” Lake said. “OAN is one of the few family-owned American media networks left in the United States. We are grateful for their generosity.”

The news that OAN, which many see as a pro-Trump propaganda outfit, will provide content for VoA, which has traditionally been a more politically neutral news source, is a move that will spur further fears about Donald Trump’s crackdown on the press.

OAN, which spread conspiracy theories about the coronavirus epidemic, almost exclusively interviews Republican politicians and rightwing voices, including this week the founder of an organization that denies the existence of the climate crisis."

For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with OAN, calling it a "hard right" news organization is absolutely The Guardian being coy. These folks are malevolent fascists, and they produce content which satisfies a rabidly pro-Trump, white nationalist audience that thinks Fox News isn't nazi enough for their tastes. This is, for all intents and purposes, like turning a state-controlled media news feed over to Bannon-era Breitbart News or Candice Owens. In other words the content OAN creates isn't news, it's propaganda, riddled with lies, nazi conspiracy theories, and cult of personality adulation for Downmarket Mussolini; if you're not seeing the parallels between what the Trump regime is trying to do here, and the adoring state-controlled media that fueled Hitler's cult of personality in Nazi Germany, it's because you're either being dishonest, or you're simply ignorant of interwar history.

Of course no knowledgeable person on the left is going to cry for the demise of Voice of America, and to a significant degree VOA has always been state news in so much as it existed to project a pro-American image into "enemy territory" during the Cold War and the War on Terror. The difference here is that now, VOA isn't merely pro-American or even pro-imperialist propaganda; it's pro-Trump's cult of personality propaganda. Furthermore the exact same global reach that made VOA a problem in the hands of US imperialist governments, now means that OAN, the Cult of Trump, and American fascism will be on display globally for all the world to observe and use a defining prism through which to see American life, news, and politics. Finally, while it may be hard to imagine now, projecting Trump's media suppression policies and actives out a couple of years, it's not hard to see how Voice of America could easily become much more popular domestically as Trump delegitimizes, censors, and revokes the broadcast licenses for news organizations that won't promote his deceptions, regime, or cult. In other words, this is the kind of small move that's easy to ignore, but remains part of a much larger plan to control the American media environment and use that control to prop up the Trump regime and its fascist agenda.

As a closing aside, I would encourage readers to please take note of the crass dishonesty and manipulative propaganda employed by Lake to justify this two stage transformation at VOA. First, she explained the clearly political and retaliatory decision to cancel VOA's sharing of news feeds from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse by pointing out that VOA had an almost billion-dollar budget and could produce its own news feeds. Now, she's justifying the installation of a pro-Trump cult fascist propaganda network to provide that very same news feed, under the auspices of saving money for the government and the American taxpayer. This woman is a crass liar, who thinks you're a fucking rube and absolutely none of this has anything to do with government spending on Voice of America.