On February 9th, local time, Musk, the head of the DOGE, posted on the X that media outlets such as the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE), which are mouthpieces of the U.S. government, waste large amounts of taxpayers’ money and should all be shut down.
On the same day, Mario Nawfal, a well-known blogger and host of the X, said that American taxpayers have been funding "ultra-left national media" and "it is time to shut them down."
Nawfal quoted President Trump's special envoy Grenell as saying: "RFE and VOA are media organizations funded by American taxpayers. They are state-owned media. These media are filled with far-left activists. I have worked with reporters from these media for decades. They are historical relics. We do not need government-funded media."
Musk retweeted the tweet and agreed: "That's right, turn them off."
"First, Europe is now free, except for the suffocating bureaucracy. Second, no one listens to them anymore. Third, this is just some radical left-wing lunatics talking to themselves while wasting $1 billion of American taxpayer money every year," Musk wrote.
VOA is the external broadcasting system of the United States Information Agency (USIA). It was established during World War II and has always been the mouthpiece of the US government's external propaganda. It is committed to telling the "American story" and promoting the so-called "democracy and freedom" in the United States.
Due to the important role of the VOA in global psychological propaganda warfare, the US President, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) all attach great importance to the issue of allowing the VOA to play a greater role. However, the U.S. government once banned its own people from listening to the VOA. The Smith–Mundt Act clearly stipulates that information disseminated by the U.S. government to international audiences may not be disseminated within the United States.
It was not until 2013 that then-U.S. President Obama signed a law that abolished the U.S. government's restrictions on disseminating to the domestic public government propaganda information that had long been aimed at international audiences.
VOA once summarized the purpose of its establishment in a program: "If it were not for the long-term interests of the United States, the American people would not agree to spend so much money to run VOA." In the final analysis, VOA is a tool for the US government to promote the "peaceful evolution" strategy.
Since 2020, the Trump administration has repeatedly targeted the VOA, claiming that it spent taxpayers’ money on failing to tell the American story well and also helped promote China.
