Confirmed as Special Advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media in 2025, these are the individuals shaping the decisions that undermine democracy.
Kari Lake, a self-described “proud election denying deplorable,” was nominated to be the director of Voice of America (VOA), the country’s largest international news broadcaster with an estimated weekly worldwide audience of over 354 million people. Lake has a history of propagandizing and bigotry that directly conflicts with VOA’s Charter of being “accurate, objective, and comprehensive.” Lake made her name as an election denialist, supporting Trump in propagating “The Big Lie,” followed by her own conspiracy mongering when she failed to win the 2022 gubernatorial election in Arizona. Lake’s open targeting of the media, along with associations with virulent antisemites, white nationalists, and anti-LGBTQ+ activists, and a plethora of election denialism organizations, clearly conflicts with VOA’s commitment to its own Charter to present responsible discussions and opinions on American policies.
In Her Own Words
“It would be an absolute shame to let the fake news cover America’s resurgence under Trump without pushback. At Voice of America, we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen. We will get the truth out there.”
– Kari Lake on Twitter, December 2024 upon her nomination to the post.
“If we don’t fight for free and fair elections, we will LOSE this country. The media is desperate to silence us. That’s why brave truth-tellers MUST keep speaking out.”
– Kari Lake on Twitter, September 2023.
“The media hates me. They say I betrayed them when I walked away from my career [as a news anchor] because I refused to keep peddling their narratives”
– Kari Lake on Twitter, October 2023.
“George Soros’ Media Matters is the evil power behind the Fake News. Soros has his tentacles all over every entity destroying America. Media Matters=The Enemy of the People. I pray @elonmusk is able to destroy Media Matters before George Soros is able to destroy America.”
– Kari Lake responding to Elon Musk announcing a lawsuit against Media Matters on Twitter, November 2023.
“We’re going to strap on our, our seat belt. We’re going to put on our helmet or your Kari Lake ball cap. We are going to put on the armor of God. And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.”
– Kari Lake urging military and law enforcement veterans to be ready for the 2024 election campaign at CPAC 2024, February 2024.
“I’m going to be your worst fricking nightmare for eight years, and we will reform the media as well. We are going to make you guys into journalists again, so get ready.”
– Kari Lake making a threatening promise to journalists during her campaign for governor of Arizona, November 2022.
“It’s time to take a sledgehammer to the mainstream media’s lies and propaganda”
– Kari Lake in a campaign ad on Twitter, November 2022.
“The invasion continues courtesy of the Biden Administration”
– Kari Lake on Twitter referencing a core concept of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, December 2024.
“We are going to show the scale of fraud and malicious intent in this case. It’s outrageous what they did, what they did to the good people of Arizona, how they perverted Election Day voting in the most hostile way possible.”
– Kari Lake on Twitter, referencing her gubernatorial loss and quoting herself being interviewed on Steve Bannon’s War Room, December 2022.
“🚨 UNDENIABLE 🚨 @KariLake reveals how Maricopa County deliberately targeted Republican voters on Election Day. This wasn’t a hiccup. This was sabotage. Another smoking gun on how the election was taken from We the People.”
– Kari Lake on Twitter, February 2023.
“I have sounded the alarm on this as well. This should be the NUMBER ONE concern and effort of the @RNCVoteProtect @ChairmanWhatley @GOP @AZGOP from now until the election. THIS is how they will try to steal the election. All hands on deck!”
– Kari Lake on Twitter responding to Trump tweet, itself a response to a Musk tweet, alleging voter fraud, October 2024.
“The 2020 Election Results were garbage and EVERYBODY knows it. That’s why the corrupt swamp creatures are going after everyone who speaks the truth about our fraudulent elections. Trump won.”
– Kari Lake on Twitter discussing the 2020 election, September 2023.
“They kicked God out of the schools and welcomed the Drag Queens. They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow. They seek to disarm Americans and militarize our Enemies.”
– Kari Lake on Twitter, June 2022.
Trump Loyalist
Much of Lake’s political career is centered on being a Donald Trump loyalist and election denialism, largely sparked by Trump’s failed presidential bid in 2020, and other forms of conspiracism, which her many public statements and associations confirm. Her role in supporting Trump and the “Big Lie” conspiracy theory, which claimed that the 2020 presidential election was rife with voter fraud, evolved throughout her political career, including during her run for governor.
In April 2020, while still working as an anchor at Fox 10 News in Arizona, Lake shared a viral video created by two California doctors, which promoted the idea of lifting the shelter-in-place order in their state. The claims in the video were criticized heavily by healthcare professionals, including a public statement by two emergency medicine organizations calling the claims “reckless and untested musings” that are “inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19.”
The video Lake shared was deplatformed by YouTube for violating its Terms of Service.
Lake kept pushing against COVID safety measures, such as protesting mask mandates at Arizona State University in August 2021, and promoted the use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID, of which the former is not authorized for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the latter disavowed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and recently a journal article that popularized its use pulled due to ethical and methodological issues.
Election Denialism
Lake dove head-first into election denialism leading up to, and during, her unsuccessful 2022 run for Arizona governor. Her election denialism can be traced as far back as November 2018, when she tweeted (now deleted) unverified information that another Twitter user received a mail-in ballot that was already filled out with votes for democratic candidates. In May 2021, Lake was hosted by EZAZ (which also goes by Strong Communities Action) in their “America’s Come Back Tour 2021.” EZAZ is an election denialism group based in Arizona focusing on “election integrity” training and investigating supposed widespread voter fraud around votes in deceased people’s name. Only one prosecution resulted from their efforts.
Lake’s problematic associations grew after she officially announced her candidacy, joining the gubernatorial race in June 2021, as she collaborated with the conspiracist vote monitoring organization True The Vote (TTV), and received endorsements from onetime TTV board member Gregg Phillips and well-known election denier Mike Lindell.
TTV made a name for themselves, much like Lake, denying the results of the 2020 presidential election by pushing baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, including in their infamous 2000 Mules “documentary” film. In September 2021, Lake and fellow gubernatorial candidate Matt Salmon signed the Arizona Patriot Party’s “Contract with Arizona.” The group was present at protests in Phoenix that featured militiamen and Proud Boys on January 6, 2021, the same day the U.S. Capitol was stormed. The contract called on Governor Doug Ducey to immediately convene a special session to, among other things, kill the state’s 30-year-old early voting program. In June 2022, Lake said she would not have certified Joe Biden’s win in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election. Around the same time, she used the terms “sickening” and “disqualifying” to describe fellow gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson for apparently “refus[ing] to admit our Election was stolen.”
Lake also relied on conspiratorial QAnon influencers, who believe that democrats and Hollywood stars have secretly created child sex trafficking rings and drink the children’s blood, to support and endorse her primary run for governor. The conspiracy is connected to several instances of violence, including a shooting in a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2016. In July 2022, Lake’s appeared on the “MatrixxxGrooove Show,” (“MG Show”) co-hosted by QAnon influencer Jeffrey Pedersen. During the interview, Lake asked for viewers to donate to her campaign, and Pederson said that the “MG Show endorses Kari Lake for Arizona governor.” That same month, Lake attended an “Arizona Election Security Forum” that featured election deniers Lara Logan and Mike Lindell, and promised “never before seen footage of election violations.”
Leading up to the 2022 election, Lake refused to say whether she would accept a loss, but did say she’s “going to win the election, and I will accept that result.” She, along with fellow republican Mark Finchem, sued state officials in April 2022 hoping to ban electronic voting machines. The case was dismissed the following August because Lake and Finchem lacked standing (ensuing appeals were rejected in October 2022, April 2024, and June 2024).
On November 14, 2022, Lake lost to democrat Katie Hobbs, but refused to concede, claiming voters were “disenfranchised” because of ballot counting equipment issues (election officials said that voters who wanted to cast a ballot in person could do so). In June 2023, Lake was sued by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer for defamation after she accused him of intentionally sabotaging the election by injecting 300,000 illegal votes into the county’s vote counts. Lake made several tweets targeting Maricopa County officials as complicit in her loss. After refusing to defend her statements made against Richer in early 2024, Lake settled the case in November.
Lake also filed suit to either overturn Hobbs’ victory or redo the election in Maricopa County. The case was dismissed in December 2022, the court saying it could not “accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.” Lake sought appeals from the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court, but those were rejected in February and March 2023, respectively.
Lake still appears to believe the 2022 gubernatorial elections in Arizona were illegitimate, saying in February 2024, “The elections are run poorly. They’re — they’re run very poorly, and I don’t know who exactly stole the election, but there are a lot of people who are running elections poorly, and we’ve seen the results.”
Far Right and White Nationalist Associations
Lake has connections to a group of far-right sheriffs, called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Police Officers Association (CSPOA), led by former sheriff Richard Mack. Mack pushes the bogus idea popular in militia circles that sheriffs are the highest level of law enforcement in a county, outranking federal and state law enforcement. Mack also has ties to other extremist organizations and served at one time on the board of the Oath Keepers militia, which had nine of its members arrested for their involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Lake was seen with Mack at the 2nd Annual U.S. Constitution Rally in Lake Havasu, Ariz., which took place in September 2023.
She also has connections to white nationalists and bigots of various stripes. These associations are particularly troublesome given that she will be managing a media network, VOA, that first began broadcasting “to combat Nazi propaganda with accurate and unbiased news and information.”
In August 2022, Lake endorsed Republican Jarrin Jackson for Oklahoma state Senate. Jarrin has made several ugly comments against the LGBTQ+ community and Jews, including calling the LGBTQ+ community a “gateway to pedophilia.” He also said, “All Jews will go to hell if they don’t believe the gospel of Jesus Christ … just like everybody else… I love Jews because Christ told me to, not because they deserve it.” Following a public backlash, Lake revoked her endorsement, claiming it to be “impossible to dig into everything someone has said in their life,” and that “If his reported comments are true, I obviously rescind my endorsement.”
In July 2023, Lake appeared on antisemite and QAnon conspiracy theorist Michael Scheuer’s podcast to promote her book and said that the Second Amendment is “there to stop the tyrants.” Scheuer has argued that American Jews are disloyal and “must be stopped and then scoured from the continent.” She has, in the past, directly accused Joe Biden of tyranny.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Lake sent friendly words to Brenden Dilley, an online far-right personality who made a name spreading conspiracy theories, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. He’s most notorious for launching a vicious online campaign against former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s teenage son, calling him a “fucking r*tard.” Dilley made a video supporting Lake, to which Lake replied “That was so awesome! Thanks for the song and video. And thank you for your friendship. MAGA!!!”
Lake is also a friend and supporter of self-described “pro-white nationalism” and “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer. Lake called Loomer a “true warrior,” and once thanked her for being an “incredible investigative journalist.” Loomer has a long history of bigotry, including saying she “totally support[s] ethnonationalism,” “never want[ing] another Muslim entering this country EVER AGAIN,” calling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) a “black dog” whose relatives “sleep in caves and have sex with goats in Al-Shabaab,” (Rep. Omar is Somali) and was banned from Uber in 2017 after saying she didn’t want to be driven by Muslims.
Lake has a history of speaking out against women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, praising the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. She’s recently expressed support for Arizona’s ban on nearly all abortions, including those where rape and incest are involved, which was enacted in 1864.
Despite having attended the shows of a drag queen named Richard Stevens for over 20 years, including a private performance at her home, Lake has attacked drag queens on Twitter, claiming that the government has “kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens” and “took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow.” She previously supported the transgender community in 2015, saying “I am absolutely rooting for anyone who makes the difficult decision to transition,” but has since backtracked, railing against “transgenderism” by calling transgender women “mentally ill men” who are “playing dress up, invading our spaces, [and] trying to act like their women.” She also called gender-affirming care “psychological abuse” and “mutilation.” In March 2024, Lake called Biden’s declaration of Transgender Day of Visibility “despicable.”
Lake appears to be comfortable with racist overtones in her public appearances and especially her online activity. In June 2024, during her senate campaign, Lake delivered a speech at a Trump merchandise store in Show Low, Ariz., which prominently displayed a Confederate flag. When questioned about the store and the hate symbol it displayed, Lake’s campaign issued a written response saying “Kari Lake went to a store. The campaign doesn’t own the store.”
Alignment with vehemently anti-immigrant rhetoric is also reflected in her various tweets claiming that migrants entering the United States are an “invasion,” language which dangerously references a core concept of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, whose believers have committed a litany of mass casualty attacks.
She also posts about migration into the United States being a “migrant crime crisis” which is “destroying the fabric of our country,” America being “beset by migrant crime” due to “open borders,” and claiming that Arizona, a border state, is “Ground Zero” for “migrant gang[s].”
Kari Lake spotted campaigning in front of a Confederate flag in Show Low, Arizona (Source: The Guardian)
Respected News Anchor to Anti-Media Mogul
Kari Lake, the youngest of nine children, was born in Rock Island, Ill., to a father who taught social studies and coached basketball and football and a mother who worked as a nurse. She grew up in Iowa, and earned a BA in communications and journalism at the University of Iowa. She was raised Catholic, but now identifies as an evangelical Christian.
Lake began her career in 1992 working as an intern for KWQC-TV, based in Davenport, Iowa, while pursuing her BA. She joined another station in Illinois for two years before being hired by NBC’s Channel 12 in Phoenix as a weekend weather anchor. She worked there for four years until leaving for a one-year stint at WNYT, based in Albany, NY. She eventually returned to Arizona in 1999 working as an evening anchor for KSAZ-TV (Fox 10 Phoenix) for 22 years.
Lake climbed the ladder at KSAZ, entering the national spotlight when she interviewed both Barack Obama in 2016 and Donald Trump in 2020. However, during these years, Lake also began to earn a reputation as a provocateur, drawing widespread criticism for consistently sharing debunked and unverified information on Twitter.
In 2018, Lake criticised the “Red for Ed” movement, which was centered around increasing funding for education, as a “big push to legalize pot” in a now-deleted post on Twitter. She later removed posts about this on Twitter and Facebook and issued a public apology on air, saying “I’d like to take a moment to address a tweet I posted yesterday that upset a lot of people. It was addressing two big issues facing Arizona: teacher pay and the effort to legalize recreational marijuana. I made an incorrect conclusion in my tweet and for that I’m sorry.” The same year, in November, she tweeted unsubstantiated claims that mail-in ballots were being sent out already filled in favor of democratic candidates.
In 2019, Lake began to speak out publicly against the media, when she was caught on a hot mic saying the Phoenix New Times was a “rag for selling marijuana.” She was also told to remove a link promoting her Parler (a far-right social media platform used frequently by participants of the January 6 Capitol riots) account by “higher ups,” with co-anchor John Hook telling her “they don’t want you tied in to anything like that where you’re going to get blowback from the (Phoenix) New Times or anyone else.”
While she was on health leave in January 2021, Lake announced the creation of her social media account on Gab, which is incredibly popular amongst violent extremists, including neo-Nazis. Lake claimed any questions related to her health leave from the media were personal attacks meant to damage her reputation.
In late February 2021, Lake was spotted at the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), known gatherings of far-right politicians and other extremist figures. In March 2021, Lake announced her resignation from Fox 10 on Rumble, a far-right video hosting platform similar to YouTube, saying “Journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom…I don’t like the direction it is going.” She also added that she was no longer “proud to be a member of the media” because she found herself “reading news copy that [she] didn’t believe was fully truthful” and feared “contributing to the fear and division in this country by continuing on in this profession.”
According to FTV Live, a Fox Television insider claimed her resignation was related to her outing as a CPAC attendee, a claim which Lake vehemently denies. She took the opportunity to attack journalists reporting on her resignation, saying “I know facts don’t really matter in your reporting on me. You are the one who has to live with your choices. So write what you will, I have given you the truth.”
Only three months after her resignation, in June 2021, Lake announced her candidacy for governor and receiving Trump’s endorsement in September. Lake won the primary and would go on to be the republican nominee in the 2022 gubernatorial elections, eventually losing to democrat Katie Hobbs.
She used her campaign to launch a full-on assault against journalists and the media, threatening that if she were to win, she’d be the media’s “worst fricking nightmare.” In one campaign ad she posted on Twitter in November 2022, Lake said she’s “taking a sledgehammer” to the “corrupt” media, who use a “communist playbook” to “manipulate the masses” and “use fear-mongering to create a scared and broken population,” all of which is crafted by “the network overlords.” She also calls reporting “propaganda” and “unethical.”
In October 2023, Lake announced her candidacy for the 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona, and was defeated by democratic nominee Ruben Callego in November 2024.
In December 2024, at an afterparty for Turning Point USA’s “AmFest,” Lake approached journalist Tim Miller, who reported that she was “scream[ing]” in his face saying “don’t touch me,” “you are a piece of shit,” and accusing him of being “fake news.”
Following her nomination to VOA, Lake has apparently cozied up with far-right journalists such as Benny Johnson, who claims he texted her a suggested lineup for VOA, which includes Steve Bannon, Dan Bongino, Mike Benz, and Mike Flynn. While Johnson appeared to pass it off as a joke, he said that Kari Lake “loved it.”
