The CEO of the American agency that governs international broadcasting has made a powerful, if blatantly false, sales pitch for his fight against ‘Russian disinformation’… right after saying “any lie will do” for the Kremlin.

John Lansing, the CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which supervises Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, among others, raised the alarm over Washington’s favorite shadowboxing opponent – ‘fake news’ allegedly spread by the Kremlin – at a recent House Committee on Appropriations hearing.

He is worried his agency isn’t getting enough government money to fight “Russian disinformation.”

As the main perpetrators, he named RT and Sputnik (no surprise there). Their goal, according to Lansing, is to “destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts,” their modus operandi – “in a world where nothing is empirically truthful, any lie will do.”

He then set his own pants on fire by claiming that while he doesn’t know for certain how much the Russian government invests in those outlets, he knows “it’s more than the US government invests.” How much more? “I think it’s around the 10x factor, absolutely.”

Which is about a 19x factor away from the truth. USAGM’s 2019 budget is $808 million. The combined 2019 budget of RT and Sputnik's media group is around $440 million – a far cry from the $8bn+ Lansing generously estimated.