https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/business/media/us-china-russia-global-communications.html
America’s rivals celebrated as the Trump administration set out to dismantle its global influence and information infrastructure, including the media outlets that had helped market the United States as the world’s moral and cultural authority.
The editor in chief of RT, the Kremlin-backed news network, crowed about President Trump’s “awesome decision” to shut down Voice of America, the federally funded network that reports in countries with limited press freedom. “Today is a holiday for me and my colleagues!”
- New York Times, 24th Jun 2025
Nury Vittachi, a Hong Kong-based writer who has written for state-run outlets, including China Daily, also welcomed the demise of the “US propaganda operatives”.
“These groups issue ‘news’ in 62 languages to influence the minds of 350 million people around the world to take a pro-American slant – and poison people’s minds against Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and other people Washington sees as rivals or ‘adversaries’,” Vittachi said on X.
- Al Jazeera, 19th Jun 2025
It must be stated that I do not live in the United States. As such, I watch American politics as nothing more than a football match of two rival teams, who are mostly evil and incompetent. In the long run, I don't care who wins because the labels that Americans use to describe their political football teams are ultimately meaningless. There are no 'liberals'; there is just a distorted orthodoxy. There are no 'conservatives'; there is just another distorted orthodoxy.
I honestly couldn't give an iota about the idiotic rainbow washing or patriotism, or whatever other else kind of pathetic virtue signalling comes out of either side. Neither do I believe that there even is a 'left' or 'right' in American politics; with there just being a libertarian right and an authoritarian right, with differing amounts of cosplay.
Having said that, I do like various radio programs which come from NPR such as the NPR Politics Podcast, Planet Money, This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me &c. and while I can listen to them as podcasts, I actually end up listening to things as broadcasts on ABC News Radio.
As someone who lives in the shadows of Empire, very big radio networks like the BBC World Service, Voice Of America, and Deutsche Welle, are regularly heard in this part of the world.
As one of the consequences of Mr Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" is to not only defund NPR and Voice Of America but punitively claw back more than $2bn in previous years' funding, it might have the secondary and likely desired effect of destroying public media in the United States. Now clearly the United States has abandoned the project of actually bothering to give a cuss about promoting the general Welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to themselves and their Posterity, but it seems to also want to make itself a smaller and tinier player on the world stage.
Other radio networks such as Xinhua and Russia Today, would be looking at the vacation of NPR and Voice Of America's radio spaces across the Asia Pacific region with absolute glee. No longer will the United States bother to project soft power via its broadcast media. No longer will the United States be bothered to make its own voice heard. What that means is that the radio spaces are free to be taken over and more importantly for networks like Xinhua and Russia Today, they can speak into the void left behind.
Voice Of America ultimately grew out of the US Forces Network following WW2. NPR and PBS were melded in the heat of the cold war when it was decided, especially during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that it was a good idea to fight communism by having an American version of the BBC World Service. Of course the irony that public media is public, infuriated the Nixon administration, but the people saw the value in truth telling when Nixon was being questioned during Watergate. Truth however is no longer a concern to the American people, whom it seems are prepared to believe actual nonsense.
In the twenty-first century after a very successful campaign by the authoritarian right to make the people drink from the poisoned waters of lies and nonsense, we finally have an administration who looks prepared to punish and destroy its rival all costs, including the cost of American supremacy in other places. This policy as far as I can tell, will likely have the same kind of effect as General Motors' policy of killing off Right Hand Drive cars as well as selling off its European subsidiaries. General Motors went from being market leader in 29 countries, to non-existent in less than two years. The Trump Administration obviously thinks that this is a Big Beautiful outcome.
Peace through strength. Strength through joy. Making America Great Again by degrading it. Winning through surrender.
