Kari Lake strikes deal for far-right OAN to provide content for Voice of America

Former news anchor turned Donald Trump surrogate Kari Lake has announced a deal with ultra-right-wing OAN to provide what she labeled as “news” coverage for Voice of America.

Lake pledged that the deal would not cost U.S. taxpayers anything. 

As with many initiatives coming out of Trump’s second administration, details were hard to come by. It was not clear, for example, if the deal would allow VOA staffers to pull from OAN segments or packages and incorporate them into its original programming. At one point, Lake proclaimed the deal as a way for VOA to have access to OAN’s “newsfeed and video service,” but did not provide any direct indication that it might simulcast OAN programming.

It was also not clear if OAN would receive any benefits from the deal, such as somehow being able to count VOA’s audience as its own.

VOA is legally barred from airing direct call-to-action commercials, much like PBS and NPR, which are being targeted by the Trump administration by claims they “illegally” aired commercials. NPR and PBS do not operate any TV stations or hold any broadcast licenses directly; instead they provide content and services to locally-licensed stations.

Lake has no control over the VOA’s editorial content and she acknowledged the OAN deal may have minimal immediate effect, so it appears this may be another example of a Trump-backed announcement designed to garner attention from all parts of the political spectrum when, in reality, it may have limited actual practicability or impact. 

Separate reports have indicated that Lake is hoping to “rebuild” VOA along the lines of OAN, including permanently reducing its staffing levels. Though not part of any official announcements, it’s not hard to see the reduction in staff as a strategy to essentially force VOA to start using content from other sources, including, potentially, OAN.

As part of her announcement, Lake said she got the idea from Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which beams Radio Martí into Cuba (Cuba’s government is influenced by communist and Marxist ideals).

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Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for both governor of Arizona and the U.S. Senate in the same state, was initially announced as Donald Trump’s pick to head Voice of America in late 2024. However, that role is not nominated or appointed by the executive branch, so Trump opted to name her a special adviser to the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA.

VOA had almost all of its editorial staffers place on administrative leave in March 2025 as part of Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to downsize the federal government and remove or overhaul agencies and programs not aligned with their views.

OAN, which bills itself as a news network, is largely seen to be a far-right network that routinely airs conspiracy theories and misinformation. It was one of the right-leaning networks accused of airing false information about Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, falsely claiming the companies were somehow involved in President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory against Trump. No evidence was ever provided to support these claims.

FNC ended up paying $787 million to settle its suit with Dominion, but is still facing a $2.7 billion suit from Smartmatic. 

OAN settled with Smartmatic for an undisclosed sum but still faces a separate suit from Dominion. It settled a separate defamation lawsuit brought by a Dominion executive.

VOA has an annual budget of $267.5 million. It was originally set up as part of an anti-propoganda strategy by the U.S., but has since shifted its mission to providing its mostly foreign audience with a working example of a free press, which can include criticism against the very government that provides its funding.

Its charter calls for the service to be “accurate, objective and comprehensive.”