Less than a month after being offered a job by incoming President Donald Trump heading up Voice of America (VOA), Kari Lake announced on X that she will not be running for office again. Instead, she accepted the job heading up the journalism position with the Trump administration. Many believe that progressive activists conducted illegal election activity to defeat her in both the 2022 election race for governor and the 2024 race for U.S. Senate.
“We know the movement that we have in Arizona, and I will never take that for granted,” she posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform on Saturday. “But there is a corrupt machine here that is hellbent on making sure I never hold office. So, I won’t put my family (and myself) through the torture of running again. I will go to Washington, D.C., return @VOANews to its glory days, and help President Trump Make America Great Again.”
We know the movement that we have in Arizona, and I will never take that for granted.
But there is a corrupt machine here that is hellbent on making sure I never hold office.
So, I won’t put my family (and myself) through the torture of running again.
I will go to Washington,… https://t.co/L8VpQl1kfA
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) December 28, 2024
She reiterated this position again later in the day, discussing her recent appearance and visit to Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference a week ago in Phoenix. “This young lady at #AMFEST asked me if I was going to run for Governor again in 2026,” she said. “The answer is no. I am going to go help President Trump turn this country around by leading @VOANews & sharing America’s story with the world.”
During her speech to the Arizona-based political organization for patriotic young people, she addressed the problem of fraud in elections. “We’re not where we need to be on elections,” she said. “And that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to run again, to be honest. Why put yourself through that torture again? Thankfully, President Trump’s victory, it was too big to rig.” Lake did not concede in either of the races she allegedly lost.
Due to concerns about election fraud, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who announced during his primary reelection race that he was voting for Joe Biden for president, was voted out of office in the Republican primary earlier this year, easily defeated by conservative Justin Heap despite the fact a third conservative candidate, Don Hiatt, could have split the conservative vote with Heap allowing Richer to win.
Similarly, Maricopa County Supervisor Jack Sellers lost his primary reelection race to conservative Chandler City Councilman Mark Stewart. After his loss, Sellers endorsed the Democrat in the race over Stewart, Joe Navarro. Despite the endorsement, Stewart went on to defeat Navarro.
Two of the county supervisors decided not to seek reelection, Bill Gates and Clint Hickman, citing the hostility towards them from election integrity activists. In Pinal County, where there was suspected election fraud in this year’s primary, reportedly affecting the results of five races, voters booted out Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer and replaced him with conservative Brad Miller.
Lake will not have to go through a confirmation process like regular Trump appointees since her position is appointed by the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Instead, that appointee, who has not yet been named, will go through the congressional appointment process. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report, which provided a conservative blueprint for the new Trump administration, found that VOA is in dire need of reform.
The previous Trump administration was highly critical of VOA. An official statement titled “Amid a Pandemic, Voice of America Spends Your Money to Promote Foreign Propaganda” accused the agency of parroting propaganda from the Chinese government. “VOA too often speaks for America’s adversaries — not its citizens,” the administration said in April 2020. “Journalists should report the facts, but VOA has instead amplified Beijing’s propaganda.”
The Trump administration described VOA as “a global news network funded by American taxpayers. It spends about $200 million each year on its mission to ‘tell America’s story’ and ‘present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively’ to people around the globe.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kari Lake” by Kari Lake / Gage Skidmore CC2.0.
