(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) As Congress this week mulled the possibility of a nationwide ban on the China-owned social-media platform TikTok, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump simultaneously flip-flopped their stances, with Biden endorsing plans to ban the platform and Trump coming out against it.
On Wednesday, in a bipartisan bill that appeared to come as a shock to some, the House voted 352-65 in support of a ban on the popular video-streaming platform.
Many speculated that it faced certain defeat in the Senate, its final backstop following Biden’s earlier pivot.
“If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” Biden said Friday after the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed legislation calling on ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest ownership of the platform or face banishment from the United States, according to NBC.
Biden never explicitly endorsed the platform, but he did join the fun this past February despite the app being banned in the White House. It was unclear why he altered his view on the matter.
However, a lobbying effort by billionaire ByteDance investor Jeff Yass was reportedly behind efforts to block the bill—and among those Yass had met with was Trump, according to New York magazine.
Shortly thereafter, Trump came out in opposition to the bill, arguing that TikTok’s exile from America would give Mark Zuckerberg and his company, Meta, free license to do as they pleased.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better,” he added. “They are a true Enemy of the People!”
Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram—along with other social-media publishers like Twitter—colluded with U.S. intelligence agencies to promote disinformation ahead of the 2020 race while censoring truthful information on several important topics.
Moreover, Zuckerberg himself spent more than $400 million on electioneering efforts funneled through two nonprofits that were used to influence the actual election outcomes in key swing states by coercing local offices to modify their policies and procedures in return for extra funding.
Many conservatives pushed back against Trump’s recent change of heart, arguing that the safety of Americans’ data superseded the desire to control Facebook’s influence.
But The Federalist suggested that Trump’s recent relationship with Yass, a GOP megadonor may have had something to do with the former president’s recent backpedaling.
Trump secured the GOP nomination for president on Tuesday, with elections in Georgia, Washington state, Mississipi and Hawaii putting him over the top for his required number of committed delegates.
Nonetheless, he remains in financially rocky straits due to the ludicrous legal verdicts in several New York cases, demanding that he put up roughly half a billion dollars while appealing the decision in a lawfare case waged by state Attorney General Letitia James or risk forfeiting his property assets.
The Trump campaign does not post on TikTok, but conservative influencers routinely engage young voters on the platform.
The Nelk Boys, a popular podcast and entertainment group on TikTok, hosted Trump on their podcast twice. The group has 4.6 million followers on the app.
“MAGA content does very well on TikTok. And Meta is suppressing MAGA content on both Facebook and Instagram,” said GOP strategist Alex Bruesewitz.
Trump originally launched the campaign to ban the platform in the U.S. over security concerns due to Chinese collection of American data.
Nearly half of all states banned the app on government devices; some states banned the platform altogether.
But some opponents of the ban, including Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, argued that TikTok’s American arm does not share any of its data with China.
Wow. This will wake you up about TikTok. https://t.co/9VLubDpxPD
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 7, 2024
Nonetheless, there is clear evidence that the company has exerted a pernicious political influence, such as its decision to allow human traffickers to stream videos that target those trying to violate U.S. immigration law.
There have further been indications that TikTok, like other social-media platforms, may be used to undermine election integrity by communicating information to individuals on how to surreptitiously coordinate illegal ballot-harvesting operations.
And as sites like Libs of TikTok have been quick to note, much of the U.S. content is a cesspool of woke toxicity that has allowed the rapid propagation of things like transgenderism and mental illness among American teenagers.
After the announcement of a possible ban on Thursday, thousands of users called in to Congress to defend the platform.
“There were numerous reports of these TikTok defenders making death threats and callers suggesting they would kill themselves if the app goes away,” The Federalist reported. “In many ways, these uniformed users proved the app is essentially a propaganda arm of the CCP.”
