President Trump’s envoy for special missions, Ric Grenell, and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk are calling for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to be shut down in the name of both saving taxpayer dollars and curbing the influence of “radical left crazy people” on press ecosystems around the planet.

“Radio Free Europe and Voice of America are media outlets paid for by the American taxpayers. It is state-owned media. These outlets are filled with far left activists,” Mr. Grenell wrote on X on Saturday. “I’ve worked with these reporters for decades. It’s a relic of the past. We don’t need government paid media outlets.”

Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were established as anti-fascist and anti-Communist, government-funded outlets in the 1940s, at the American entrance into World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, respectively. For decades, they have been used to provide news to citizens of countries where unfavored press outlets are banned, though the broadcasts continue to this day in nations that are deemed allies of the United States. 

Combined, both outfits currently broadcast news to dozens of countries across six continents. 

Mr. Musk echoed Mr. Grenell’s call for abolishing the outlets in a post online, saying that America doesn’t need taxpayer-funded press reports to be broadcast all over the world. “Yes, shut them down,” Mr. Musk argued, saying that “Europe is free now” and that “Nobody listens to them anymore.”

“It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money,” he added. 

In fiscal year 2022, Voice of America reported that they reached a weekly audience of 326 million people in 48 different languages. Radio Free Europe, on the other hand, reaches just 47 million on average per week with a staff of 1,700 across 20 bureaus. 

Voice of America itself had a budget that year of $267 million, one quarter of the budget for its parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That agency, which also controls Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, had a total budget of more than $1 billion in fiscal year 2024, though it was slashed in half by congressional Republicans to just more than $500 billion during the last government funding battle. 

Mr. Trump has already nominated two close conservative allies to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Voice of America. Republican activist and writer Brent Bozell, who for more than 35 years has led the right-wing Media Research Center to expose what Mr. Bozell calls “leftist bias” in the press, will lead the Agency for Global Media if confirmed by the Senate.

Kari Lake, who was Mr. Trump’s choice for both Arizona governor in 2022 and for the state’s Senate race in 2024, has been nominated to be the new Voice of America director after her decades in television news.