House Republican leaders are moving this week to pass legislation that would force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the platform or face a U.S. ban, even as former President Donald J. vowed to forbid.
Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and the majority leader, said Monday that the House would try to speed up passage of the bill under special procedures reserved for uncontested legislation, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass. The approach reflects the bill’s growing momentum on Capitol Hill during an election year in which members of both political parties are eager to show a willingness to get tough on China.
“We need to make sure the Chinese government can’t weaponize TikTok against American users and our government through data collection and propaganda,” Mr. Scalise said in a weekly preview of legislation to be considered on the House floor.
The 13-page bill is the product of the Chinese Communist Party’s Select Committee, which has served as an island of bipartisanship in the polarized House. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously last week to advance the legislation, which would remove TikTok from app stores in the United States by September 30 unless its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, sell her share.
But Mr. Trump, who as president issued an executive order doing just that, has now reversed course and strongly opposes the bill, a move that will test his ability to keep pushing bipartisan legislation through Congress since the campaign trail. .
Mr Trump on Monday gave a strange explanation for his reversal, saying he did not want to alienate young voters or imbue Facebook, which he sees as a mortal enemy, with more power.
In an interview with CNBC, Mr Trump said he still considered TikTok a national security threat but that banning it would make young people “crazy”. He added that any action that harmed the platform would benefit Facebook, which he called “the enemy of the people.”
“Honestly, there are a lot of people on TikTok who love it,” Mr Trump said. “There are a lot of new kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”
“There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad with TikTok,” he added, “but what I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I think Facebook is the enemy of the people. , along with many media outlets.”
It is not yet clear whether Mr. Trump’s reversal on the issue will erode the bill’s broad base of support in the House, where the intense fight over the legislation has become tense. Many lawmakers were outraged last week when TikTok sent its users flooding congressional hotlines with pleas imploring members not to shut down the platform.
“Trump’s TikTok flip-flop puts House Republicans in a very uncomfortable position because it forces them to choose between supporting Trump or countering China,” said Jeff Garin, a Democratic strategist. “Voters on both sides of the aisle don’t trust China to play by any meaningful set of rules and believe that China is determined to get away with whatever it can get away with, and that will apply to China’s control of TikTok.”
The legislation is one of several efforts in the past year aimed at curbing TikTok over concerns that ByteDance’s relationship with Beijing poses national security risks, and President Biden has said he would sign it. TikTok has struggled to respond to the crackdown, and the company said its chief executive, Shou Chew, would be in Washington this week for meetings scheduled ahead of the House vote.
One of the bill’s co-sponsors is Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 Republican, whose name is on every list to be Mr. Trump’s running mate and who is rarely caught off guard with the former president. .
As he cruises toward the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump is wielding a heavier hand than at any time since leaving office over his party’s agenda in Congress. His strong opposition to pending TikTok legislation comes just weeks after he used his influence with Republicans in Congress to help push a bipartisan immigration bill through the Senate that was seen as a unique opportunity for a conservative border security bill. .
But unlike the immigration issue, the two parties are not divided on TikTok. Both see a political advantage in supporting policies aimed at China.
But Mr. Trump’s defense of the bill appears to be having some effect. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told “Meet the Press” that he was “really conflicted” about the ban. In 2020, Mr Graham defended Mr Trump’s executive action against the company, writing on social media that the president was “right to want to make sure the Chinese Communist Party does not own TikTok and more importantly – all the your personal data.”
On Sunday, Mr. Graham said he did not yet know how he would vote on the bill if it went to the Senate. “I’m definitely conflicted,” he said.
And it’s unclear what the bill’s prospects will be in the Senate, where Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York and the majority leader, has not committed to taking it up.
In a rare show of bipartisanship in the House, the top Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the China panel have used nearly identical language to describe the dangers of TikTok.
“America’s main adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the Republican president. His Democratic counterpart, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, said TikTok “poses critical threats to our national security” because it is owned by ByteDance.
But after the bill passed a House committee last week, Mr Trump attacked Truth Social, his social media platform, writing that “if you get rid of TikTok”, it would double Facebook’s business. He said he didn’t want Facebook to “do better.”
Mr. Trump was banned from Facebook the day after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill and reinstated early last year.
To back up his “enemy of the people” claim, Mr. Trump singled out Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 2020 grants to state and local election offices to help vote management during the pandemic. Mr. Trump suggested that Mr. Zuckerberg, whose website was part of the Trump campaign’s strategy in both 2016 and 2020, should face prison time for those donations.
Asked on Monday about suspicions that he had been “paid” to change his view on TikTok after a meeting with a major TikTok investor, billionaire Jeff Yass, Mr Trump denied it. Mr. Trump reportedly praised Mr. Yass, a major donor to the Club for Growth, as “fantastic” and the group recently reached out to him after a years-long freeze.
Through the Club for Growth, Mr. Yass has funded a major advocacy effort in Washington to stop the ban on TikTok. He and his allies have recruited several former Trump administration officials to help with the effort — including Tony Sayegh, who was a Treasury official, and Kellyanne Conway, who was a senior adviser to the president.
In the CNBC interview, Mr Trump said he had not discussed TikTok with Mr Yass in their meeting.
“No, I didn’t,” Mr Trump said, saying it was a brief meeting with Mr Yass and his wife. “He never mentioned TikTok.”
Mr Trump’s criticism of the new legislation is striking given his move to clamp down on the company while in office. An executive order he signed in August 2020 said that TikTok’s collection of data from its users “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to personal and proprietary information of Americans.” He added that TikTok could be used to spread disinformation that benefited Beijing.
“These risks are real,” the executive order said.
Mr Trump’s administration has moved to block Apple and Google’s app stores from carrying TikTok over concerns about the app’s Chinese ownership. However, federal courts have repeatedly ruled to block Mr Trump’s TikTok ban.
David McCabe, Maggie Haberman and Sapna Maheshwari contributed to the report.
