Republicans, Democrats unite against TikTok

It took escalating Communist Chinese aggression and a smart-phone app that gives groomers and foreign adversaries alike easy access to tens of millions of American children to unite Republicans and Democrats, but it happened Thursday as politicians from both parties confronted the CEO of TikTok.

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew the House Energy and Commerce Committee that its owner, the Beijing-based internet company ByteDance, “is not an ‘agent’ of communist-led China — amid growing U.S. concerns the immensely popular social media site is a national security threat and omnipresent danger to teens’ mental health,” Just the News reported.

Congressmen from both sides of the aisle on the committee came at Chew like waves on a beach, hitting him with tough questions about: Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, access to Americans’ TikTok user data; the app’s algorithms that hook teens on harmful (even deadly) videos; and the app’s biased moderation, including the banning of NBC star Enes Kanter Freedom, a fierce critic of human rights abuses in Communist China.

“Much of Chew’s attempts to stress that his company is not an arm of the Chinese government appeared to fall on deaf ears. Numerous members of Congress interrupted the chief executive’s testimony to say they simply don’t believe him,” reported CNN.

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Rep. August Pfluger, R-TX., told Chew, “I’ve got to hand it to you: you’ve actually done something that in the last three to four years has not happened, [with] the exception of Vladimir Putin. You have unified Republicans and Democrats. If only for a day, we are actually unified, because we have serious concerns.”

Pfluger questioned an evasive Chew about TikTok’s sudden action against Kanter Freedom, a bold critic of Communist China’s dictatorship.

@enesfreedom

EXPOSED! Here is proof that the CEO of @tiktok Shou Chew lied in front of the whole world. They want to manipulate & brainwash our youth! #CCP doesn’t care about freedom of speech. #China doesn’t care about human rights. We have to take concrete action before it’s too late! #TikTok (Try to ban me again)

♬ original sound – Enes Kanter FREEDOM

Freedom provided real-time evidence of TikTok’s compromised ethics on the app itself: showing how his account was restored just as Chew was being grilled about his banishment. Freedom commented: “The CEO of @tiktok Shou Chew is a liar and the #CCP’s puppet. … He was giving a testimony in front of members of Congress, and a Congressman asked him why #TikTok banned me after sharing content about China’s Human Rights abuses. While he was asking the question, TikTok unbanned me. I recorded everything. Here is a proof of how the CEO of Tiktok Shou Chew is lying front right in front of our Congress.”

@enesfreedom

The CEO of @tiktok Shou Chew is a liar and the CCP’s puppet. @ He was giving a testimony in front of members of Congress, and a Congressman asked him why #TikTok banned me after sharing content about China’s Human Rights abuses. While he was asking the question, TikTok unbanned me. I recorded everything. Here is a proof of how the CEO of Tiktok Shou Chew is lying front right in front of our congress. #BanTikTok

♬ original sound – Enes Kanter FREEDOM

Even though it has been mainly Republican governors in red states, led by South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, who have pushed for banning TikTok app on state employees’ devices, Democrats on the Energy and Commerce hearing were also tough on Chew.

CNN reported:

In an exchange with California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, Chew talked up TikTok’s ongoing efforts to protect U.S. user data and said he has “seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data; they have never asked us, we have not provided it.”

“I find that actually preposterous,” Eshoo fired back.

“I have looked in — and I have seen no evidence of this happening,” Chew responded. “Our commitment is to move their data into the United States, to be stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel. So the risk would be similar to any government going to an American company, asking for data.”

“I don’t believe that TikTok — that you have said or done anything to convince us,” Eshoo said.

Outside the Capitol, the conservative Heritage Foundation organized a press conference with the speakers and assembled supporters wearing “Ban TikTok” t-shirts.

“If China had soldiers showing up after school to American schools, picking up kids, taking them to indoctrination centers, and then teaching those kids what they want to teach them, to produce a future where our children hate our own country, we would all stand up against it. Congress would act,” conservative activist Robby Starbuck said at the outdoor press event.

When a foreign adversary deploys a weapon against your children, you act to stop it. TikTok is a CCP weapon against American children & we cannot allow them to exploit & destroy future generations of Americans for their communist, anti-American aims. #BanTikTok@robbystarbuck pic.twitter.com/AGXfuEYD9i

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) March 23, 2023

“This wouldn’t be partisan and it shouldn’t be partisan. If you care about our kids, you have to realize: this is not an app, this a weapon. And you act when your foreign adversaries use a weapon against your children. Period,” he said.

After Democrat New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman said at a pro-TikTok press conference that Republicans are against the app because they lack “swag,” Starbuck torched the Congressman, saying, “Maybe we need more members of Congress who are more focused on protecting our country and our kids than if they look like they have swag”:

from @robbystarbuck

“Jamal Bowman said Republicans want to ban [TikTok] cause they don’t have swag. Well, you know what? Maybe we need more members of Congress who are more focused on protecting our country and our kids than if they look like they have swag” #BanTikTok pic.twitter.com/cLIRbg31RU

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) March 23, 2023

Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik, who has done more than anyone in the world to expose the app’s harmful videos aimed at impressionable kids, also spoke at the press event.

“TikTok is a weapon being used to groom our kids,” Raichik said. “Predators are lurking everywhere trying to get access to your children to groom them. … Over the last few years, TikTok has become a cesspool for LGBTQ activists to target children with propaganda.”

“TikTok is designed to attract our impressionable youth. Groomers and predators know this and are using it to their advantage,” she said.

“TikTok is designed to attract our impressionable youth. Groomers and predators know this and are using it to their advantage.”

Chaya Raichik founder of @libsoftiktok doesn’t hold punches while speaking on Capitol Hill today. #BanTikTok pic.twitter.com/r9p9eREcaZ

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) March 23, 2023

EDITOR’S NOTE: Question: Why do the political and corporate leaders of America – long the freest, most successful, most prosperous and most Christian nation in history – bow and scrape before China, a ruthless, communist, totalitarian and explicitly atheistic dictatorship openly committed to ruling the world, including America?

The astonishing answers come into focus only when one contemplates both the unprecedented level of political and financial corruption in America’s ruling class (multiple Biden family members received $31 million in payola from China), and simultaneously the communist Chinese government’s brilliantly devious methods of unconventional total warfare, by which China is stealthily infiltrating, subverting, corrupting and colonizing the United States of America.

The China threat has rarely been more dramatically or pointedly documented than in the sensational March issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “HOW CHINA IS CONQUERING AMERICA.” Whistleblower is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.

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