After Hours: Tug of War: Trump Wants to Shut Down a Federal Media Agency

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Full Measure After Hours
Host: Sharyl Attkisson
Episode Title: Tug of War: Trump Wants to Shut Down a Federal Media Agency
Date: March 26, 2026

In this episode, Sharyl Attkisson explores the behind-the-scenes conflict surrounding former President Donald Trump's efforts to shutter the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The episode features an in-depth interview with Kari Lake, now deputy CEO of the agency, who candidly discusses the justifications for downsizing or abolishing USAGM, alleged corruption and mismanagement, and the challenges faced due to legal and institutional obstacles. The discussion covers disputes over editorial control, cost cutting, alleged political bias, and the tension between government oversight and press freedom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is the U.S. Agency for Global Media? ([02:33])

• Kari Lake: Describes USAGM as a government-funded broadcasting network aimed at global audiences (not Americans).

  • “It really is a kind of a propaganda agency…pushing what it's supposed to be pushing is America's values and true news out to the world.” (02:33)

• USAGM is positioned as a tool of national security and foreign policy through media.

  • “We are supposed to be kind of in line with what our foreign policy is…Unfortunately, over the years…those lines are not divergent, they're kind of cross haired and cross wired.” (03:09)

2. Initial Conditions and Major Concerns ([03:29]–[06:54])

• On entering the agency, Lake called it “rotten to the core” due to extensive evidence of corruption, lack of proper employee vetting (especially of foreign nationals), and mismanagement.

  • "When I first got in there…more than half of the people who worked there had never been properly vetted…Many of them foreign nationals from nations that are hostile to America…” (03:36)
  • Raises alarm about 500 out of 1500 employees being unaccounted for, questioning if some were “ghost employees” or “spies.”
    • “[They] were never able to track down and figure out where they went…Were they real people? Were they ghost employees? Were they spies who came in and they were given fake Social Security numbers…?” (04:22)

• Accuses the agency of issuing fake social security numbers to unvetted hires.

  • Lake: “The agency did. The agency did, to bring them in.” (05:13)

• Criticizes USAGM’s grantees (e.g., Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia) for misaligned content, pushing a “globalist agenda,” or echoing anti-American narratives.

  • "Radio Free Asia, which...has made some very questionable decisions...very much aligned in the past with the CCP, rather than pushing what America's priorities are." (06:45)

3. Editorial Firewalls and “Trump-proofing” ([07:02]–[10:08])

• Lake explains the agency was deliberately restructured to prevent Trump-aligned leadership from influencing editorial content.

  • “In part of their Trump proofing, they put up an editorial firewall, which makes it impossible for someone like me to call down to the newsroom and say, hey, what are you guys doing? That's not in alignment with what we're supposed to be talking about…” (09:13)

• Cites the experience of Michael Pack, Trump’s prior nominee for CEO, as evidence of bureaucratic resistance.

  • “[Pack] couldn't even get hearings. He couldn't even get meetings on Capitol Hill…He was the very last nominee to be confirmed. It took him three and a half years.” (07:40)

• Highlights ongoing tension between executive authority and institutional/legislative resistance.

4. Cost-Cutting and Reform Measures ([10:08]–[14:27])

• Agency has executed significant downsizing, including shrinking staff by 85%.

  • "We only needed about four languages, not the 50 plus...I believe we've reduced the agency to about 85%..." (11:43)

• Describes challenges from the judiciary: a federal judge paused planned layoffs, keeping employees on payroll and stalling efforts to restructure.

  • “Unfortunately, the day before we were supposed to have terminated hundreds of employees…a D.C. district Court judge stepped in and said no.” (12:46)

• Criticizes USAGM’s extravagance, especially a $250M lease on a luxury DC office (quickly canceled by Lake).

  • “They did right before President Trump won his second term in the fall, before they signed a quarter of a billion dollar, ten year lease on probably one of the swankiest buildings in Washington, D.C.…One of the first things I did was cancel that lease.” (14:33)

• Called for moving successful, minimal operations (e.g. Radio Martí) under State Department instead of a standalone agency.

• Lake claims to be the only agency head to ask Congress to reduce appropriations.

  • “I've gone over to the appropriators and said, please don't give us the amount of money you've been giving us before.” (13:51)

5. Editorial Control, Spending, and Deep Challenges ([16:04]–[19:07])

• Describes a scenario where the editorial firewall means nominees can't prevent negative (and, Lake claims, false) VOA coverage.

  • “But if I call over…and say, don't do that, that's not true, they could sue him for breaking the editorial firewall because it applies to anybody in the government trying to tell them what they can or can't cover.” (16:43)

• Highlights spending on outside newswire services (AP/Reuters/AFP), and bizarre expenditures like sponsoring an Afghan cricket team and a NYC concert.

  • "...tens of millions of dollars we were spending over the last few years on Reuters, AP, AFP...$300,000 in our Afghan language to sponsor an Afghan low level cricket team…” (17:30)

6. Employee Accountability and Hiring Practices ([19:08]–[20:53])

• Further details on former employees from hostile nations who disappeared after being given hiring shortcuts or misused visas.

  • “They came into the country from countries that I said, many of which are hostile…at some point in the 10, 15 years that they weren't vetting properly, they disappeared…Once you are a GS13, GS14, SES, whatever you are, you can go to any other agency in the federal government.” (19:23)

• Critiques the use of J1 visas to bring in foreigners and their families with a path to citizenship, instead of hiring American language speakers.

7. Specific Reforms and Remaining Issues ([21:00]–[24:13])

• Current push for new grant agreements, especially after Radio Free Asia curbed broadcasts while still receiving $60M in funds.

  • “They put out that we haven't paid them, which is an absolute lie…They've stopped broadcasting and they're trying to sell their expensive broadcasting equipment…We told them to stop doing that.” (21:18)

• Recalls finding previous staff meetings at the Chinese embassy and content “aligned” with CCP interests, including a “pro-CCP propaganda” segment funded by American taxpayers.

  • "Two seconds of pro Chinese propaganda is too much..." (22:20)

• Unearthed planned hiring of alleged Russian spies at Radio Free Europe and anti-American propagandists at VOA.

  • “Radio Free Europe was this close to hiring 20 Russian spies. Had we not been tipped off and stopped them…” (22:54)

• Anecdote about a transgender VOA reporter covering Pakistan and her belief this sent the “wrong message” to the target audience.

  • “One of our VOA reporters was a cross dressing man…covering Pakistan. So the Pakistani people, when they looked at Voice of America, were seeing a cross dressing man. How do you think that went over?” (23:13)

• Concludes the agency must either be drastically reformed or started over.

  • "You’ve got a rotten piece of fish...Sometimes you have to start over. And I think we’ve come pretty close to doing that right now." (23:52)
  • Notes Trump’s budget calls for eliminating USAGM, but some components may be salvaged.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On corruption and vetting:

  • “There were 1500, I believe 500 of them were never able to track down and figure out where they went. Were they real people? Were they ghost employees? Were they spies who came in…given fake Social Security numbers…?” — Kari Lake (04:11)

• On editorial control:

  • “In part of their Trump proofing, they put up an editorial firewall, which makes it impossible for someone like me to call down to the newsroom and say, hey, what are you guys doing?...” — Kari Lake (09:13)

• On drastic downsizing:

  • “We only needed about four languages, not the 50 plus languages…We’ve reduced 85% of the agency through either early retirements…the fork in the road offer…or just terminations.” — Kari Lake (11:44)

• On excessive government spending:

  • “One of the first things I did was cancel that (quarter of a billion dollar) lease.” — Kari Lake (14:47)

• On American storytelling:

  • “…we should be really trying to only hire Americans. How do you tell the American story if you don’t understand American culture, American history, and you’re not part of America?” — Kari Lake (20:37)

• On starting over:

  • “You’ve got a rotten piece of fish…Sometimes you have to start over.” — Kari Lake (23:52)

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Major Timestamps

• [02:33] – What is USAGM?
• [03:36] – “Rotten to the core” corruption and employee vetting failures
• [05:13] – The agency issued fake Social Security numbers
• [06:45] – Grantees and questionable foreign influence
• [07:40] – Michael Pack’s nomination and "Trump-proofing"
• [10:24] – Downsizing: statutory minimum mandate and language reductions
• [12:46] – Legal roadblocks: mass layoff halted by D.C. judge
• [14:33] – $250M lease and cost-cutting
• [16:43] – Editorial firewalls blocking oversight
• [17:30] – Out-of-control discretionary spending
• [19:23] – Missing, unvetted foreign employees and misuse of visa programs
• [21:18] – Grant management, grantee noncompliance, and suspicious equipment sales
• [22:20] – VOA staff meeting with Chinese officials; pro-CCP content
• [22:54] – Near-hiring of Russian spies; anti-American narrative concerns
• [23:13] – Culturally insensitive assignments
• [23:52] – Reform philosophy: “Sometimes you have to start over.”

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Summary Tone & Closing Thoughts

Throughout the interview, Kari Lake adopts a tone of urgency, frustration, and determination, emphasizing what she perceives as deep-rooted corruption, lack of accountability, and political/ideological resistance in USAGM. She positions her and Trump's actions as corrective and patriotic, sharply critical of past leadership, certain judicial interventions, and agency spending. Lake also highlights the limits imposed by institutional norms such as the editorial firewall, which she considers a barrier to proper agency oversight. Attkisson’s questions are direct and largely facilitate Lake's narrative.

Listeners come away with an understanding of:

• The Trump administration’s rationale (and methods) for targeting USAGM;
• The sharp disputes over what U.S. government media should do abroad;
• Alleged mismanagement, political bias, and structural obstacles in federal media;
• The broader context of legal and administrative battles facing Trump and his appointees.

This episode provides a rare, unfiltered perspective on attempts to reshape government media in line with the Trump administration’s foreign policy and management philosophy.

Transcript

[Carrie Lake]

Foreign.

[Cheryl Atkinson]

Hi everybody, it's Cheryl Atkinson. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours today. Tug of war Trump wants to shut down a federal Media Agency the U.S. agency for Global Media has been the subject of a tug of war ever since President Trump named Kerry Lake to lead it and ultimately to shut it down. At least that was the goal. A judge recently ruled that mass layoffs and other actions to dismantle the U.S. agency for Global Media are void because the judge said Lake's initial appointment didn't follow Senate confirmation requirements. Major decisions beside those mass layoffs included restructuring efforts at Voice of America and some big cost saving measures, as well as anti corruption moves. The challenge to these things that Carrie Lake and President Trump wanted to do. The challenge originated from a lawsuit brought by VOA journalists along with federal employee unions such as afscme plus press freedom organizations who sought to protect the agency as is and halt the dismantling attempts. They were part of the legal challenge as well. All of this amid allegations that the organization had become politically biased, wasteful and corrupted. Now the new head as a result of all of this is a woman named Sarah Rogers, with Carrie Lake staying on as deputy CEO. It's unclear as of this recording whether Rogers will try to re implement the voided actions. It's just the latest effort by Trump's opponents to use the courts to stop him from executing his agenda. No president has ever faced such aggressive and persistent acts to obstruct nearly every item he and his supporters want to be pursued. Sunday, March 29th on full measure. I'm interviewing Carrie Lake and I'll explain what the Agency for Global Media is exactly why it's in Trump's crosshairs and what makes his opponents so anxious to preserve it. Here's the interview with now deputy CEO of the Agency for Global Media, Carrie

[Carrie Lake]

Lake,

[Interviewer]

Just in one paragraph or so. What is the Agency for Global Media?

[Carrie Lake]

It's the U.S. agency that gives media access to global audiences. So it's, I mean it really is a kind of a propaganda agency. It's government funded media that is going out to countries around the world. It's not being broadcast here in America, but it's pushing. What it's supposed to be pushing is America's values and true news out to the world.

[Interviewer]

It's is this supposed to be an issue? Sort of national security or foreign relations? Ideally, what is the parts it does

[Carrie Lake]

fall under national security and we are supposed to be kind of in line with what our foreign policy is and what our policies are. Unfortunately, over the Years we've seen where those lines are not divergent. They're kind of cross haired and cross wired. So we're trying to get it back to a little bit more.

[Interviewer]

When you aligned, when you came into the agency, there's a quote of you calling it rotten to the core. What made you say that?

[Carrie Lake]

Well, when I first got into the agency, I started pulling all kinds of documents, looking at various agreements, looking at many of the past investigations they had done on alleged corruption in the agency. And as I dug through all of that, I realized, oh my gosh, this thing is even worse than I heard it was when I got in there. I mean, when I first got in there, I realized that, and I learned this from the previous Trump administration folks who were there, when they first got in there, they realized that more than half of the people who worked there had never been properly vetted. They were just being hired, many of them foreign nationals from nations that are hostile to America were brought in, didn't go through proper vetting, fingerprint background checks that are required for somebody to work at this agency. You have to realize once you get in at this agency, you have access to get into to any part of the government. And if we're hiring people with sketchy backgrounds from countries that don't like us, that now all of a sudden have access to the government and we intentionally didn't do the background check that was required, that's criminal, really, in my mind, especially knowing that many of them, as we started to reassess and look back at where are these people? Where have they gone? There were 1500, I believe 500 of them were never able to track down and figure out where they went. Were they real people? Were they ghost employees? Were they spies who came in and they were given fake Social Security numbers and then did they disappear somewhere into the federal government?

[Interviewer]

Who gave them the fake Social Security numbers?

[Carrie Lake]

The agency did. The agency did, to bring them in. So that's one thing. The other thing is we've got these grantees that are just money pours in without a proper accounting of where the money is going. In many cases, some of the grantees are doing not telling America's story abroad, but rather telling a globalist story. You could argue that Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty has been pushing a very globalist agenda. They started up actually a language service to cover Hungary, which means you're kind of going in, going sideways with the current government and pushing the very Euro globalist mission in Hungary, knowing that Hungary, which is an ally, and Viktor Orban at The time was president or prime minister. He's prime minister now. We're trying to push against him, a duly elected representative who is actually representing the country because he was against having the Syrian migrant crisis overwhelm his nation because he is pushing the sovereignty of Hungary, and it went against what the EU wanted. You can look at what they're doing at Radio Free Europe and say, wow, they're really pushing the globalist agenda, not what America's about. And we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on that. This is coming from American taxpayers that are footing the bill for that. For our grantee, Middle east broadcast network, for our other grantee, Radio Free Asia, which has had, you could argue, has made some very questionable decisions on their coverage. It's been very much aligned in the past with the ccp. Rather than pushing what America's priorities are.

[Interviewer]

Can you reach down into these broadcasters in other countries and dictate or steer content decisions?

[Carrie Lake]

Well, let me tell you, let me go backwards on that really quickly. This agency is so important to the Deep state that in the first Trump administration, the very last nominee that he put up for nomination to head up an agency was Michael Paak, and it was for the US Agency for Global Media. I don't think they thought President Trump was going to win. And they had reconfigured the agency prior to President Trump's 2016 victory and gave the CEO of the agency incredible power over that agency. And then, surprise, surprise, President Trump won. He names Michael Pack as the person he wants to be the CEO for that agency. And they refused to confirm him. He couldn't even get hearings. He couldn't even get meetings on Capitol Hill. He was the very last nominee to be confirmed. It took him three and a half years. Finally, President Trump called over to the Senate, said, what the hell's going on? Why is my guy not confirmed yet? 3 and a half years in? So they dragged their feet. They finally confirmed him. He got in the door and they tried to block him every step of the way. He was the one that discovered they had all these unvetted people from nations hostile to America and started to dig through that and try to shape it up and do some investigations on where money was being spent, who was coming into the agency hiring spies and such. So the minute Joe Biden took office, the very first person he fired. Now think of all the people that could have been fired. Fauci, maybe? Fauci, no, the very first person Joe Biden fired was Michael Paak. This unassuming, gentle guy from this little agency called U.S. agency for Global Media, the last one that they allowed to get in, the first one fired. So between that time and President Trump's second term, which is what we're in now, they've said they Trump proofed. The agency, made it impossible for President Trump to get his people in and get anything done. So I've had to do a lot of maneuvering in this role. I started as senior advisor and I've worked my way into the deputy CEO position. Every day we are focused on how are the American taxpayer dollars that are coming into this agency being spent? What is the content going out? Is it in alignment with American policy, or is it anti American as it had been before? Unfortunately, in part of their Trump proofing, they put up an editorial firewall, which makes it impossible for someone like me to call down to the newsroom and say, hey, what are you guys doing? That's not in alignment with what we're supposed to be talking about at this agency when it comes to our foreign policy, et cetera. So there's a firewall there that prevents me from having a say editorially in what goes on. Thankfully, we've shrunk the agency down quite a bit, and I think the people we have doing the work right now are doing a pretty decent job of just keeping it on the straight and narrow.

[Interviewer]

When we're looking at expenses. Not so much the corruption in terms of content or who is being hired. What are some of the things that you've done in terms of hiring positions, cutting funds on potentially wasteful spending, and so on?

[Carrie Lake]

Well, we're not hiring a lot. We have been reducing the size of the agency. Right. When I got in, I saw a lot of very disturbing things about how things were being spent past content that we put on. I mean, two days after President Trump got inaugurated, they put up a graphic with President Trump's face and the swastika over it. I mean, I would have been appalled if they did that with Joe Biden. It's not political. Where'd they put that up two days after he.

[Interviewer]

I mean, inside the agency or on the air?

[Carrie Lake]

Broadcasted on the air.

[Interviewer]

And who saw that?

[Carrie Lake]

I saw it.

[Interviewer]

I mean, I'm sorry, who were they broadcasting it to?

[Carrie Lake]

They were broadcasting it to our Spanish language audience. And I just said, oh, my God, this is just so bad what's going on. So we have got in there and. And within about two weeks of me getting in, the President put out an executive order calling for this agency and a few others to be scale back to their statutory minimum, which means what is required by law and nothing more. So we had the daunting task of figuring out what's required by law at this agency. And it's been in existence for 84 years. There's a lot of different statutes that tell us what we must do. We had to sort through all of that and figure out what we must keep and what we don't have to keep. And we determined through actually the, the career senior leadership helped me come up with a plan and we determined we only needed about four languages, not the 50 plus languages. So we proceeded to work on a reduction in force and we, I believe we've reduced the agency to about 85%. We've reduced 85% of the agency through either early retirements, the fork in the road offer that was famously put forth by Elon Musk, or just terminations. Unfortunately, the day before we were supposed to have terminated hundreds of employees to be off the federal payroll forever. A D.C. district Court judge stepped in and said no. And he paused it. So we're kind of in a little bit of limbo right now. We have these people that were supposed to be off the federal payroll who are still on the payroll because a district court judge in Washington D.C. thinks that he's running an executive branch agency. He thinks he's the co president of this country, much like other D.C. district court judges. And by the way, this is one, the one who we've been, our cases have been assigned to, who was the one that was probably the most cruel when it came to the J6ers, these men and women and grandmas in some cases who went to the Capitol to protest what they saw as a very unfair, in many cases, corrupt election of 2020 and were using, exerting their First Amendment rights nonviolently. They were hauled into his courtroom where he proceeded to sleep during the trial and then woke up and threw the book at them. So this is kind of what we're dealing with, with the judicial branch right now. As we're trying to run the agency, he's trying to run it for us. So we'll see what happens. We're fighting each and every case. We've got a good team of attorneys and I'm determined to boil this agency down to its statutory minimum. And frankly, I think we should take what works at the agency. I think Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Marti down in Miami broadcasting into Cuba. They're doing some really good work with a small operation of 33 people and we should roll that into The Department of State, we don't need a separate agency to do our propaganda. It should come under state where we can make sure it's in alignment with what our foreign policy is. And so we're working through the legislature to make that happen. I've gone over to the appropriators and said, please don't give us the amount of money you've been giving us before. I think I'm the only agency head that's ever gone to the appropriations folks and said, no, we don't want that much money, please don't give us that much money. And we'll see what they do. Because if they give us the money, as you know, it's required by law that we spend it. And I think that would be a travesty for the American people.

[Cheryl Atkinson]

The agency.

[Interviewer]

Did the agency have a $250 million Pennsylvania Avenue lease?

[Carrie Lake]

They did right before President Trump won his second term in the fall, before they signed a quarter of a billion dollar, ten year lease on probably one of the swankiest buildings in Washington, D.C. just a few blocks down from the White House. That's where actually where I showed up on my first day. And I was floored. I don't think I've been in a building that fancy. You walk in and there were these massive waterfalls and Italian Carrara marble and glass everywhere. I can't even imagine what cleaning the windows would have been like in that building. And it was beautiful. It was a former law office, but we're a federal agency. And I could barely stand to even sit in the building thinking that, you know, the overnight truck driver in Arizona, the farmer in Iowa, the schoolteacher in Michigan, you know, anybody, the secretary in Nevada was footing the bill for that, not to mention who got the big commission check on that. So one of the first things I did was cancel that lease. We went back into the building that we're in, the Cohen building, which is a very old building, and we do have to get out of it because GSA is actually taking it back and I think they're going to sell it. But there's a lot of office space, federal office space, that does not cost a quarter of a billion dollars. The place wasn't even built out for broadcasting. So on top of that, we would have had to spend probably 100 million building it out to do broadcasting.

[Interviewer]

Lastly, you mentioned how they said they Trump proofed the agency and you faced some challenges. What are some typical examples of things, besides the one you named that you run into if you try to make change? One was the firewall between editorial. But what are other things you see or sense going on around you?

[Carrie Lake]

Well, the firewalls especially disturbed me because they could, and this is a true story. The VOA was going to do a hit piece, a classic hit piece on one of President Trump's nominees. And that nominee called me before I even got in and said, what are they, what are they doing over there? And you know, they're trying to run a hit piece on me and it's not even true. He said, but if I. He actually had done the homework on it, and he said, but if I call over to them and say, don't do that, that's not true, they could sue him for breaking the editorial firewall because it applies to anybody in the government trying to tell them what they can or can't cover. And even saying what you're about to put out is false. Don't cover, don't put that out. Could qualify as potential lawsuit. So imagine that they can put out a hit piece and you have to sit there and take it, because you can't even pick up the phone and say, that's not true. That's gotta go. There has to be. I've never worked in a newsroom, and I'm sure you haven't, Cheryl, where there hasn't been some editorial oversight in management somewhere to be able to say, we gotta keep it kind of somewhere within the realm of reality here. And so that's one big thing. One was just the spending. I mean, I started to go through right away, line item, through our contracts, the tens of millions of dollars we were spending over the last few years on Reuters, ap, afp, Agency, French press and various other media outlets basically funding them to give us news so we could put it out. Well, I thought we were a news agency. Why is a billion dollar American government news agency paying the ap, Reuters, AFP to tell us what the news is? Why are we keeping them in business? Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? And so we canceled a lot of that. We found out that they were speaking, spending crazy amounts of money, $300,000 in our afghan language to sponsor an Afghan low level cricket team. Apparently somebody on the staff was a cricket fan and liked to go to games. 300,000 of the taxpayers from, as I mentioned, truck drivers and teachers and hardworking Americans paying to sponsor a cricket team in Afghanistan. An $800,000 New York City concert was sponsored by one of the VOA outlets. It's just, I mean, I could go on and on the outrageous spending that was going on. But we saw it also at usaid. And now America knows that almost every dime that comes through this government is misspent.

[Cheryl Atkinson]

Last question.

[Interviewer]

When you mentioned how employees disappeared or can't be accounted for, can you just tell me a little bit more? Are these people that were on the books no longer being paid, but you're trying to figure out how they got hired and not vetted, or were they still being paid?

[Carrie Lake]

They came into the country from countries that I said, many of which are hostile because some of the countries that we're broadcasting to are ones that we don't get along with. So they're coming into the country, which we don't do this anymore, coming into the country from hostile nations, put on the air to be a broadcaster, and then at some point in the 10, 15 years that they weren't vetting properly, they disappeared. They left the agency. Now, once you are a GS13, GS14, SES, whatever you are, you can go to any other agency in the federal government. So they could have gone to other agencies in the federal government as a translator at the State Department, who knows where. But they've disappeared. And we hadn't been able to track 500 of them down. And they were also abusing the J1 visa system. That's where you bring in au pairs, cultural exchange. There is a visa for journalists, but they were bringing them into the J1 visa, bringing their families in, allowing them to stay in a path to citizenship. And I frankly think we have enough Americans who speak languages that are outside of the English language that we should be really trying to only hire Americans. How do you tell the American story if you don't understand American culture, American history, and you're not part of America? To bring somebody in from a hostile nation to then go out and tell America's story? It just, it seems like it's the opposite of what we should be doing at this agency.

[Interviewer]

And then lastly, we can get a list of these. But are there any reforms you want to tick off that have been made or are on the horizon?

[Carrie Lake]

Well, a couple of things we're working on right now is to come up with new grant agreements for our grantees. We've been very upset with Radio Free Asia. They shut down. The judge has forced. They put out that we haven't paid them, which is an absolute lie. We've paid them $60 million because the judge forced us to pay them. And yet, even though they've taken the $60 million, they've stopped broadcasting and they're Trying to sell their expensive broadcasting equipment, some of which, you know, cameras that go for 10, $11,000 for 80 cents. They're trying to auction everything off. And so we told them to stop doing that. And we're trying to work with these grantees to make sure that what they're putting out, again, is in alignment with what America, American values and American policy is. If we're paying for it, we should make sure that not one minute of it is anti American. You know, we also found out that we had staffers before I got there that were going over to the Chinese embassy to conduct meetings on how they could better cover China and the ccp. And they actually at one point produced a two minute VOA production, a piece that was pro ccp and it was Chinese propaganda. They admitted they had done wrong and they said, we won't do that again. But two minutes of propaganda produced by the VOA operation, paid for by VOA taxpayers. I'm sorry, by American taxpayers. Two seconds of pro Chinese propaganda is too much. We also found out Radio Free Europe was this close to hiring 20 Russian spies. Had we not been tipped off and stopped them, they were going to have 20 Russian spies on their books and paying them. You know, we look back at times where they hired a Russian propagandist to come work at VOA to put out anti American propaganda. I mean, it just, it's mind boggling when you dig into this. One of the first things that came across my desk when I got there was a complaint that one of our VOA reporters was a cross dressing man, Trans, you know, best height, transgender, cross dressing, covering Pakistan. So the Pakistani people, when they looked at Voice of America, were seeing a cross dressing man. How do you think that went over? What message did that say about America? This place was upside down and backwards. And thankfully, President Trump had the foresight to say, hey, we got to do something about this. He shrunk it down. And right now we're trying to sort things out because some things, you know, I said this during my congressional hearing. You've got a rotten piece of fish. You don't look at that and go, well, what part in here can we pull out? Maybe what's good? What can we eat for dinner tonight? Sometimes you have to start over. And I think we've come pretty close to doing that right now. We're not done yet. I don't know what the future holds. President in his budget had called to get rid of the agency, but I think there are some valuable components of it that we can save and we're working right now to sort that out. Foreign.

[Cheryl Atkinson]

For the full story, watch full measure Sunday, March 29th. You can go to Cheryl Akison.com and click the Full Measure tab to see a list of stations and times. Or you can always watch online at FullMeasure News. FullMeasure News. We usually have the show posted around 11:30 or noon Eastern time on Sundays Eastern. And if you miss it on Sunday, March 29, no worries because you can go to FullMeasure News anytime and watch replays. Or visit our unadvertised YouTube channel Full Measure with Cheryl Atkinson to see replays of all of our stories, a lot of them as relevant today as they were when we first reported some of them as far back as 10 years ago. I hope you enjoyed the podcast and that you'll leave us a great review, share it with your friends and subscribe. And check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Akison Podcast to support independent journalism. Pick up a copy of my latest national bestseller, Follow the Science How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. Proceeds support independent reporting causes. Same with proceeds from the Cheryl Atkison store. Visit cheryl akison.com and click the Store tab for some amazing original products you're sure to love, with slogans such as I need to find some new conspiracy theories. All my old ones came true. And do your own research, make up your own mind, Think for yourself.