As reported earlier – The US House approved a bill Wednesday that demands China tech giant ByteDance to sell off TikTok, or the infamous media app will be effectively banned in America. Specifically, the bill gives TikTok “six months to eliminate foreign adversary control — which would include ByteDance divesting its current ownership — to remain available in the United States.”
The vote passed with strong bipartisan support 352-65 with one member voting present.
On Thursday Tucker Carlson interviewed Senator Rand Paul following this vote in the US House of Representatives. Rand Paul fears this will lead to more viewpoint discrimination and censorship by our political leaders.
Tucker Carlson: The majority of House Republicans, amazingly, just aligned with the Biden administration on one of its top priorities, to ban the social media app TikTok. This amounts to the most far reaching act of censorship in the history of the United States. It’s an attack on the right of american citizens to receive their information from any source they choose. Most of us believe that was a fundamental right, but of course, almost someone in Washington will admit that’s happening. That’s not at all what’s going on. They tell us no. Instead, they’re framing what’s very obviously censorship as an act of self defense against a foreign adversary. And if that sounds familiar, it should be. It’s the same rationale they used to spy on Donald Trump, among other things, once they designated him a tool of Russia. And as always, they’re doing all of this in the bluntest, least restrained terms, because it’s your fault, actually…
Tucker introduces Senator Rand Paul.
Tucker Carlson: …I’ll go ahead and presume to speak for you, too. I don’t think most people are really that in favor of TikTok or the chinese government. I assume you’re not. I’m definitely not. But republican leaders seem to believe two things that contradict one another one, they believe that on some evidence that Joe Biden is kind of controlled by China and that Joe Biden is pushing yet, and that is true. But they’re aligning with Joe Biden, who is suddenly claiming that TikTok is bad because it’s too chinese and it’s pouring filth into the minds of our children. Now, he can’t be sincere about that, obviously. So why would they be joining him in this? Do you have any idea?
Sen. Rand Paul: My concern has always been with the centralization of power, with giving up power. I don’t care whether it’s a republican or a Democrat president. I don’t want any president to have the power to ban apps that are sold on an App Store. And that’s essentially what this is going to happen. 180,000,000 Americans put dance videos up and whatever else is on TikTok. And they choose the terms of those service the same way people on Facebook do. And does Facebook scrape your data? Sure. Does Google scrape your data? Do all of these giant tech companies scrape your data? They all take your data. But the thing is, there are now accusations. They say, oh, TikTok’s owned by the Chinese government. The Chinese communists own it. Well, that’s not even true. You can’t say stuff just over and over again. That’s not true. TikTok is owned by about 60% of it’s owned by international investors from all over the world. 20% is owned by the two Chinese software engineers that created the app. And 20% is owned by the employees of TikTok, which 7000 of them are Americans. So there’s a significant nexus of Americans in the ownership, and then there’s a significant nexus of Americans using this.
And they say, oh, well, the Chinese government owns it. It’s just, frankly, not true. Now, the company that owns TikTok also owns something like TikTok that is censored, and the Chinese let that be broadcast throughout China. The Chinese government does have a member of the board. It’s called Doyan. It’s the chinese TikTok. But they don’t have a member of the board of Bytedance. They don’t control Bytedance, and the data is now kept in Oracle cloud centered in Texas. And this has been done because the company wants to try to exist. It’s a very popular app. It has a great deal of value, so they’re doing anything they can to comply. And yet the hysterics in the house are just shut them down. Shut them down. Communism this, communism that. Look, I’ve written two books about chinese communism and what it does, both during the COVID leak and also what it did during Mao’s reign. So I am no fan of Chinese communism, but at the same time, we can’t sort of know emulate the Chinese to try to protect our way of life, becoming like the Chinese and banning things. TikTok is banned in China.
If we ban TikTok, we’re simply becoming and acting like the Chinese. So there is a hysteria afoot. But in America, there are things that protect. You can’t just take people’s stuff. In America, if you have a company, I can’t come take Tucker Carlson network just from you because one of your investors is from China. I have to go to court. I have to prove that somehow you’re a Chinese communist and that you’re giving data to them. These are all allegations. They may or may not be true, but you can’t take someone’s company worth billions of dollars without proving it in a court of law. Likewise, you can’t take the rights of freedom of speech of 100 and 7180 million people who want to express themselves. So I think the courts will rule against this. They did twice in the last four years in federal court, and they just recently overturned the Montana ban. So I think there’s a very good chance this is unconstitutional. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring any of my colleagues in the house…
…But the First Amendment is more important than anything they’re talking about, and so is the Fifth Amendment. But there are many people, including some of your former colleagues at Fox, who believe that there’s an exception to the constitution, that it doesn’t apply when there’s national security. The problem with that is there’s always a national security for any excuse, for anything you want to do. And so I don’t think you throw out the constitution when there’s allegations of some kind of connection. You have to prove that before you take someone’s stuff and before you take someone’s first amendment privileges.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it. That’s what happens in a free country, but it happens in an authoritarian country when you’re connected to government. If you don’t like something and you shut it down. And that’s what’s happening now. They don’t like the content. They make an allegation that it’s controlled by the chinese government, which there isn’t objective evidence of…
…Emulating Chinese communists is not the best way to combat Chinese communists.
The people who’ve handed our country to China are banning TikTok to protect you from China? Probably not. So what’s really going on? Rand Paul joins us to explain. pic.twitter.com/XRe7fvqoOw
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 14, 2024
