America’s Adversaries Are Gaining the Global Megaphone

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!”

Hu Xijin, a former editor in chief of China’s state-run outlet Global Times, wrote that the paralysis of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia was “really gratifying” and, he hoped, “irreversible.” A top aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary posted that he “couldn’t be happier” about the administration’s move in February to gut the agency that distributed foreign media funding. Officials in Cambodia and Cuba also welcomed the cuts.