Former President Donald Trump cautioned young voters that President Joe Biden intends to eradicate popular social media app TikTok. The House just passed a measure to move that prohibition forward, and it must now clear the Senate to reach the Oval Office.
Trump as president was notably suspicious of the Chinese app, but he now believes that many liberal proponents want it banned to benefit Meta’s Facebook.
The current standoff is between those in Washington who wish to see parent company ByteDance part ways with TikTok and the stance of the Chinese government. Beijing indicated that is not going to happen, leading to the present dilemma.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee posted on his Truth Social app, “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.”
Trump added, “He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and be able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party.
President Trump has a new post about TikTok. pic.twitter.com/gpPJ7oE4eC
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) April 23, 2024
The 45th president is well aware of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s insidious influence on the 2020 presidential race. He proceeded to term the ban “election interference.”
On the same day the U.S. House passed another $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, lawmakers approved a measure that would give ByteDance nine months to divest from the American version of the app or be banned.
The vote was 360-58.
TikTok claimed it does not and will not share the vast troves of user data harvested from U.S. users. It asserted that such a ban violates the First Amendment for its 170 million users in the country.
The Chinese company further vowed to fight in court. Reuters reported that TikTok said in an email that “we will move to the courts for a legal challenge. We’ll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the First Amendment.”
The White House shot back on Monday, saying it did not want to go through with the ban.
It countered that it wants to ensure that the app is owned by an American company to prevent the People’s Republic of China from having access to data from millions of U.S. users.
