Carrie Lake
Appearances
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
According to our reporting, she really, really wanted Voice of America. And that was something that she pitched to the president. Absolutely. Carrie Lake told her associates that she wanted to shape the Voice of America to be more in line with President Trump's vision and more in line with America First messaging.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
But I believe it is worth trying to say. She said she's fully qualified for this. She's been doing this kind of work for decades. She understands the industry. And she made a really impassioned pitch for it. And it was something that clearly appealed to Trump in terms of the way that he was thinking about she could use her experience as a news anchor.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
And it was something that he was going to be able to kind of shape from afar through her.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
Yes. I mean, when she first arrived, there were a couple of people who were in the building with her. First of all, she arrived with a few Doge staffers. And there was another woman who wrote Project 2025's chapter on Doge. What should happen to Voice of America? And it was full of allegations that there were spies in the agency, that there were leftists who had taken over.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
And Carrie Lake was eager to kind of clean all that out. What she did when she first got there was she targeted... two journalists. One of them, a reporter named Steve Herman, who you've heard from earlier in the show, was placed on administrative leave for his social media activity, which was alleged to be biased and anti-Trump. And then Carrie Lake was
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
canceled all of the wire contracts that Voice of America had. So she took away Agence France-Presse, the AP. She was sort of trying to doge the agency herself, but she was not talking about shutting it down altogether.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
Carrie Lake is sort of a microcosm of what's happening to a lot of these Trump loyalists who are placed at the top of very high profile agencies. Voice of America is not a high profile agency. You know, Voice of America is sort of this backwater. But what you see happening with her is that she's coming in. She's there because she's loyal.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
And Donald Trump has rewarded her and she has ideas for what she wants to do with this agency. And whether it's Rick Grinnell or Elon Musk, they're just crazy. gutting the entire operation. They are not interested in reform.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
Or if they are interested in reform, it's more of a kind of break this thing down and rebuild it from absolute scratch, which was not what Carrie Lake was planning to do, according to our reporting.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
So Carrie Lake is trying to kind of cancel contracts and cancel the lease on this building as a way to sort of doge the agency herself. And then she starts to talk about how once she got in the building, she was so aghast to see all of this corruption. And it was really an unsalvageable place based on everything that she had learned.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
Oh, I mean, I don't think there's much that she can really do. What you're seeing when you look at the Voice of America's website and its different sort of broadcasts, there's no one left to report the news. So, you know, Carrie Lake, I wouldn't say that... I wouldn't overstate, you know, she saw this as a possibility for her, but if there's anything that we have seen...
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
with Carrie Lake is that she knows how to survive as someone in MAGA world, in Trump world, in some capacity. So she is not going to die on the hill of saving Voice of America. She's going to figure out a way to be relevant for Donald Trump. And if he doesn't want to have Voice of America exist, she is not going to fight that.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
I guess that's where we... I guess that's where we landed.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
Well, Carrie Lake, before she lost the race for governor and before she lost her race to become a senator, she was a longtime television news presenter.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
and she had done that in Arizona for decades. By the time she gets to these two losses, she has become one of the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump and his false election denial claims that he lost the election in 2020 because of massive fraud.
Today, Explained
Silencing the Voice of America
And when she, after she loses her race for Senate and after Donald Trump wins the presidency, she tells him... I want to help advance your priorities from inside the administration. And she wants to be the director of Voice of America. It's a federally funded news organization, and she wants to sort of help shape how that news is delivered to a global audience.