Exactly eight years ago this week, there were reports of concerns among Voice of America officials that Donald Trump — in his first go-around as president-elect — might try to politicize the network’s coverage. Several years later, federal investigators determined that Michael Pack, a Trump-appointed official who helped oversee the VOA, did abuse the powers of his office.
Pack, it’s also worth noting, faced complaints from more than 30 whistleblowers during his tenure.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump is president-elect again, and he has someone new in mind for the network. NBC News reported:
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he wants ally Kari Lake to be the next director of the Voice of America, a federal network that’s part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. … Lake said on X she was “honored” by Trump’s announcement. “Under my leadership, the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America’s achievements worldwide,” she said.
As NBC News’ report added, “The VOA’s stated mission is not to promote America’s achievements; rather, its website says it is ‘committed to providing comprehensive coverage of the news and telling audiences the truth.’”
The truth, of course, has not been the Arizona Republican’s strong suit, at least not in recent years: Lake is perhaps best known for being a prominent GOP election denier and conspiracy theorist, who rejected both Trump’s 2020 loss and her own defeat in a 2022 gubernatorial race. (Last month, she also lost a U.S. Senate race.)
What’s more, it’s not altogether reassuring that Lake, a former local broadcaster, appears slated to help lead a journalistic outlet despite her repeated condemnations of journalists, whom she’s referred to as “monsters.”
But stepping back, there’s also a larger pattern to consider: The president-elect sure is picking a lot of failed candidates for his incoming administration.
Roll Call ran an interesting item recently that noted, “For someone who has made winning a key part of his personal, professional and political brand, Donald Trump is set to rely on a large stable of losers in his second term.” According to Roll Call’s tally, at least 17 of the president-elect’s personnel choices had failed at bids for elected office.
After the report was published, Trump tapped former Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — both Georgia Republicans who lost elections in the recent past — for prominent positions in the upcoming administration. In fact, three Republicans ended up losing Senate races in Georgia in 2020 — Perdue, Loeffler, and former Rep. Doug Collins — and now all three of them have been tapped for Trump administration jobs. This week, the president-elect also announced plans to appoint former Republican Rep. Dan Bishop to a key federal post in the wake of his failed state attorney general’s race in North Carolina, which was soon followed by the Lake news. As for Trump’s motivations, The New York Times published a related analysis that noted, “It’s a surprising development for a political figure who has long deployed the word ‘loser’ as an insult, and who tried to overturn the 2020 election rather than admit he lost it. But some of these Republicans lost their races in part because of their support for Trump — which means losing can make for winning politics in Washington when loyalty to Trump is the coin of the realm.” All of which suggests the so-called “Team of Losers” list might yet grow longer.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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