We all know how tRump hates the VOA. So he’s slapping them down, and down hard. He has cancelled contracts and gutted the agency. The President of VOA has advised that he was placed on leave as well as “virtually the entire staff “ of 1,300. What the hell??
Employees expect the worldwide news coverage to grind to a halt. I would expect everyone at the organization is in a waiting game, wondering when the next shoe is going to drop. This is going to make Agent Orange pretty ridiculous to the rest of the world. He’s cancelling them because he just doesn’t like them. So the hammer is coming down. I don’t know if we should have expected this or not. I’ve heard of VOA but never actually listened. But if it covers news worldwide, I think that would be pretty significant.
tRump’s temper tantrums are just pitiful. He seems to think his EOs override the law and they make new ones. But they don’t do that. There is a process to follow to make a new law and it isn’t the Orangutan’s Sharpie. It’s just not that easy.
I’d like to say that he started insane things the first day he was officially in office. He had EOs ready to sign as soon as he got back from being inaugurated! I’ll have to look up what the count is. It’s likely to have increased since the last time I checked. But, back to VOA.
VOA is part of the US Agency for Global Media, which also runs networks like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and others. Those are also going to be on the chopping block. The US has been funding things like these for decades to promote accurate news and democratic values in places that are saturated by foreign propaganda. Their mission is “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”
Now we’re going to lose it. DonOld’s advisors say broadcasters are bloated and outdated. But by closing instead of refreshing, they are giving the airwaves to China and other world powers, therefore harming US interests abroad. Trump expects different things. He wants the network to “clearly and effectively present the policies of the Trump Administration around the world.” I would think they had been doing at least *some* of that.
But as we know, the Mango Mandarin is so, so vain. So it should be all tRump, all the time. Well shoot, you’re going to run out of news about him at some point every day. Kinda hard to be all tRump all the time. He has nominated a couple people, including election-denier Kari Lake, to re-do the VOA. We know what that means. She’ll be fawning all over him and he will be able to get what he wants.
In the meantime we close with, “VOA needs thoughtful reform, and we have made progress in that regard,” but sidelining the staff means that VOA won’t be able to carry out its mission. “That mission is especially critical today,” he wrote, “when America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States.”
So what happens next?
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How many millions learned/are learning their English through VOA? Absorbed the ideas while improving in the language? Cheap and powerful. Soft power at its best. A vaccuum filled by others, likely using English but less honest in ideas and content
Of course he shuttered VOA. Vlad likely told him to. Can’t have stupid Americans insisting on freedom and democracy when we want oligarchy and power.