Trump comes out in support of TikTok as bipartisan support for ban grows in Congress
WASHINGTON - Is time up for TikTok? On Monday, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told FOX 5 that he’s supporting a move in Congress that would force the social media site to be sold or face a ban across the U.S.
Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much but there’s growing bipartisan support on the Hill for going after the wildly popular social media platform.
It’s sparked by concerns the social media app could be easily exploited by the Chinese government to steal private data or manipulate the content users watch.
The bill requires TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to fully divest all of its applications within 180 days or risk a ban on those apps. It also sets up a way in which the White House could ban apps in the future if they are deemed a security risk.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, told FOX 5 that he supports the move.
"I know people make livings as social influencers off TikTok. I think that’s all good but I’m deeply concerned as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee that at the end of the day, the data we are sharing could end up being confiscated by the communist party of China," Warner said.
TikTok is estimated to have around 170 million users in the U.S. and this debate is in the middle of a presidential election year.
President Joe Biden has said if the bill gets to his desk he’d sign it but former President Donald Trump came out Monday saying he’s against banning the app.
Speaking with CNBC’s "Sqawk Box", Trump said that banning the popular app would only empower competitor Facebook, owned by parent company Meta.
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"The thing I don’t like is that without TikTok you’re going to make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media," Trump said.
Trump has repeatedly complained about Facebook’s role in the 2020 election in the past, alleging that the social media platform and owner Mark Zuckerberg had too much influence in the race that he still refuses to concede he lost to President Joe Biden.
He had said as much in a post on his social media platform TruthSocial last week, saying, "If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!"
It’s an about-face for the former president, who also attempted to ban TikTok while he was in office through an executive order that prohibited "any transaction by a US person or within the US that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, causes a violation of, or attempts to violate the prohibition set forth in this order."
The ban was unsuccessful and TikTok has continued to lobby Congress to remain active in the U.S.
Caleb Max, founder of Times Up TikTok, a group supporting TikTok’s breakup says the lobbying efforts have been intense.
"TikTok has 32 former staffers, multiple former members of Congress and senators as well as some of the biggest public affair firms in Washington, D.C. launched on this thing fulltime with millions of dollars in backing and our goal is to try to combat that," Max said.
For his part, Sen. Warner tells FOX 5 that Congress needs to also look at setting up a way to review future apps because while today’s debate is over China and TikTok other countries like Russia and Iran could likely pose similar social media threats as well.