'Is This The Voice Of Beijing?!': Andy Barr & Kari Lake Slam VOA

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During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) questioned Kari Lake about Chinese influence on Voice of America.

Transcript

00:00Recognizes Representative Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Lake, I'm sorry you've had to endure

00:05these ad hominem attacks, which are clearly designed to shift focus away from the patriotic

00:12work that you're doing to honor American, hard-working American taxpayers, and make sure

00:17not only that you're cleaning out the corruption and, frankly, the rot within this agency, but

00:23actually advancing American national security as opposed to actively undermining it. That's right.

00:29And to my colleague who just asked you about Beijing and Beijing rejoicing, the reason why

00:36Beijing needs to be a focus of this conversation is we need to be asking the question, I think

00:42you just did, why is the Chinese Communist Party in charge of VOA? Why are they running VOA?

00:51Past leadership of the VOA Mandarin Language Service conducted annual meetings with the Chinese

00:56Embassy in Washington, D.C., allowing Chinese Embassy officials to opine and make suggestions

01:03on VOA Mandarin Language Service content. Chinese Communist Party officials have also reached

01:08out to VOA hosts to convince them to be more supportive of the Communist regime, and the outcomes

01:15have actually rewarded the CCP's efforts. VOA's Mandarin Language Service personalities have

01:21hosted events at the Chinese Embassy, and one of VOA's television editors even publicly pledged his

01:27allegiance to the People's Republic of China at a Chinese Embassy event. Is this correct, Ms. Light?

01:32This is correct. This is correct. And whistleblowers in the agency, in the Mandarin Service,

01:38who tried to stop that were fired or got so burned out trying to stop it, they left the job.

01:45So VOA also allowed Communist Vietnamese and Communist Chinese embassies in Washington, D.C. to pressure

01:54them into removing videos, cutting short live interviews, or changing story angles so that

02:00the coverage was more supportive of the Communist governments of Hanoi and Beijing. Is this the

02:07voice of America? Or is this the voice of Beijing?

02:11Some have said it's the voice of anti-America.

02:14Yeah, so I think that your efforts to reform the agency are vital to American national security.

02:23Why are we allowing the CCP to run the VOA newsroom while the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for this?

02:32Are any of these VOA employees who acted on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, are they still employed?

02:38It's possible. We're working to try to figure that out. But unfortunately, when you do a reduction in

02:46force, it's called a RIF, and we are reducing the number of people who work at Voice of America,

02:52you can't, typical government fashion, you can't say, hey, we'd like to keep certain people because

02:57they are people who are performing well and doing a good job. You can't do that in the government.

03:03You just remove positions. And so we are shedding some of the positions, making the force lean and

03:09mean and ready to operate. And we can surge. When a big story breaks, we can surge. We've got

03:14additional funding to do that by pulling back some of the funding from the grantees. We have about

03:1917.3 million dollars. So when we have to surge to cover something that's breaking, we can do that.

03:25So Dan Robinson, a 34-year veteran of VOA and a former White House correspondent, here's what he wrote.

03:32I have monitored the agency's bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it

03:36has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation, often reflecting leftist bias aligned

03:43with partisan national media. It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic

03:48standards and mismanagement. We've got great examples of this even in the Oval Office. A former

03:55VOA associate editor Carol Gruensberg directed staff to, quote, avoid calling Hamas and its members

04:02terrorists. Again, this is not the voice of America. This is the voice of America's enemies. And I thank

04:10you for trying to clean up the mess. And last question, you've heard a lot of language like a

04:14vacuum and gutting and dismantling. I want you, Ms. Lake, to clear the record once and for all in this

04:21final question, address the hysteria from the administration's critics here and clarify what

04:26is the administration's objective here? Is it to end U.S. international broadcasting or is the goal

04:32to reform the agency so that actually is the voice of America and not the voice against America?

04:38I believe that the goal of the administration is to reform the agency, but to eliminate,

04:44to reform our messaging, but to eliminate a corrupt agency. We don't need USAGM to get a message out,

04:52a positive pro-America message out. We can do this through other methods.

04:56Well, deep state bias is one thing, mismanagement corruption is one thing,

05:01but when you, when you are actively undermining American national security,

05:05this agency needs massive reform and I thank you for leading it. Thank you.

05:10Yield back. Chair now recognizes Representative Kamlager Dove.

05:14Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member. And thank you, Ms. Lake, for joining us today.

05:22I'm deeply concerned that what the Trump administration is doing to VOA and all of the

05:31independent broadcast networks is harming the United States and serving our adversaries. It seems like

05:37everyone

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