Hong promotional video raises new questions about Voice of America expenditures and ideology during the Biden years
In the nineteen months since President Trump took office for the second time, progressive outcry over his DOGE cuts to taxpayer-funded media entities like Voice of America has been loud and consistent.
A staple argument against the cuts has been that they diminish America's ability to advance foreign policy and core diplomatic and security goals through soft power means, and leave America more vulnerable to enemies including Communist China and similar regimes.
But a Crimson Hub audit has revealed that under the prior administration, Voice of America produced and disseminated a video profiling Democratic Socialists of America member and "fresh face" of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Francesca Hong.
In the video, titled "Cookin' Up Policies," Hong is mostly profiled as the first Asian-American member of the Wisconsin legislature and as a chef.
But she also makes time to mention lefty policies ranging from "food sustainability" to "climate justice" to a vastly-increased minimum wage.
That might be expected from an elected official who joined the Democratic Socialists of America in 2020, years before the video was produced and posted online.
The Voice of America video does not mention her DSA affiliation, perhaps not surprisingly, given its intended dissemination into South Korea and Asia more broadly.
South Korea is the Western-aligned nation left after the Korean War split the Korean peninsula into a Communist chunk, and a non-Communist chunk.
Communist China remains a strategic rival in the region today, just as it did during the Korean War that divided the peninsula and in which it played a key role.
Democratic Socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders explicitly differentiate themselves as socialists from "Social Democrats" of the type found in Europe, putting them on the ideological continuum between European center-left parties and full-on communist regimes in Asia and Latin America. Those governments have widely been regarded as American adversaries by the entire right and most of the political left in the US.
So why was Voice of America spending US taxpayer money to hype a Korean-American Democratic Socialist, given the US' multi-decade anti-socialism-on-the-Korean-peninsula-and-across-Asia strategic objectives?
For now, the specifics of this editorial decision remain a mystery; Voice of America representatives did not reply to our request for comment prior to publication.
However, the Hong film short seems egregiously out-of-step with the objectives of an organization intended to advance American values and objectives.
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