Tara Suter writes for The Hill about a former vice president’s public opposition to a major social media platform tied to communist China.
Former GOP presidential primary candidate and Vice President Mike Pence urged Congress to pass a bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S.
“The era of appeasing the Chinese Communist Party is over,” Pence said in a thread on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Politicians claiming to be ‘tough on China’ while simultaneously supporting TikTok spewing CCP-sanctioned propaganda across the world are wrong. China is poisoning the minds of American children. Enough is enough.
“Congress should pass legislation forcing the sale of TikTok as soon as possible, and President Biden must immediately sign it into law,” Pence continued in the thread.
On Tuesday, a bipartisan House bill that would ban the popular app if its China-based parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest from it was unveiled. It was introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who are both the top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Hill.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously advanced the bill Thursday and President Biden said he will sign the bill if it makes it through Congress.
“If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” Biden told reporters Friday.
Pence called TikTok “Chinese spyware that allows the Chinese Communist Party to manipulate the minds of young Americans at will and compromises the privacy of millions of Americans,” in his thread on X.
