Is there now a Trump state-funded TV channel?

You’d think Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies would be all in favor of a propagandist news network designed to promote American interests and undermine foreign governments. This is (or was) Voice of America, a state-broadcasting company established during World War II as part of a “cultural diplomacy” push and became a key pillar of American propaganda during the Cold War.

Voice of America, via its station Radio Free Europe, was said to have been a key weapon against communism, being transmitted beyond the Iron Curtain and used to undermine the Soviet Union. More recently it’s been used to transmit pro-democracy programming in Mandarin and Cantonese in China, as well as promoting the image of the U.S. in the Middle East, and cutting through Russian state propaganda about the war in Ukraine. As a measure of how far Voice of America was burrowed inside the security state, one of the station’s relay stations in Thailand also doubled up as a CIA black site known as the “Cat’s Eye”. Now that’s cozy!

No state-sponsored broadcaster – especially one intended to be listened to by foreign citizens – will be unbiased and objective. However, if you’re the U.S. Government Voice of America seems to have been an effective and relatively cheap way to deliver a flag-waving dose of American patriotism to people you want on your side.

A waste of money?

Yes, shut them down.

1. Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Hello??

2. Nobody listens to them anymore.

3. It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money. https://t.co/PnmN4erD91

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025

Or, at least, that used to be the case. Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk consider Voice of America a waste of money and, as of an executive order on Friday, have effectively dismantled it and its broadcasting subsidiaries. In China, where they’ve long been attempting to jam these broadcasts, it was time to crack open the champagne and celebrate the end of what state tabloid Global Times dubbed a “lie factory” with an “appalling track record”.

Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Global Times sounds overjoyed, writing on Sunday that: “Almost all Chinese people know about VOA because it is a symbolic tool of the U.S. for ideological infiltration into China,” and cheered on its closure as “truly gratifying.”

Global Times went on to dance a jig on Voice of America‘s grave, pointing to its many anti-China stories and concluding “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it” and that it was a “frontline propaganda tool.” Fine! Yes, it was a frontline propaganda tool, but darnit, it was America’s frontline propaganda tool!

Regardless of its merits, it’s now over in its current form. Trump cheerleader Kari Lake dubbed it “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer”, Elon Musk dismissed it as “radical left”, and the White House news release on the closure said: “Taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

As such, Voice of America is now only playing an alarmingly Trumpy 30-second loop promising to “present the policies of the United States” to epic choral music. Right now, I guess we can consider this the beginning of Trump TV, though whether it’ll ever get back to broadcasting anything substantial remains to be seen. And, if it does, expect it to be all Trump, all the time.