Former President Donald Trump broke with the Republican Party on Monday, once again lamenting legislation that will force China to cede control over the TikTok social media app.
TikTok is a key spying and influence tool for the Chinese Communist Party. But newly passed and soon-to-be-signed legislation means that TikTok’s Chinese Communist Party-linked owner, ByteDance, will have to divest itself of the app or see TikTok banned in the United States.
Trump is unhappy about this.
Posting to his Truth Social platform, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee complained, “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok. He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party. It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE! Young people, and lots of others, must remember this on November 5th, ELECTION DAY, when they vote! They also must remember, more importantly, that he is destroying our Country, and is A MAJOR THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!”
This is pretty ludicrous stuff.
The reason that Trump opposes the sale of TikTok is quite simple. It’s because a major stakeholder in TikTok, Jeff Yass, is now giving Trump his support and funding. Trump previously supported a ban on Chinese control over TikTok but experienced a remarkable about-face after meeting with Yass. One might even say that Trump’s about-face appears crooked.
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In contrast, the reason that Biden and the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats favor this legislation has nothing to do with Facebook. Instead, they recognize that ByteDance’s control over TikTok has allowed and will continue to allow the Chinese intelligence services to identify and target Americans for espionage recruitment or blackmail — and to shape American attitudes in China’s favor. Beijing’s use of TikTok in this pursuit is not in doubt. Indeed, China’s furious complaints and lobbying against this legislation prove its deep concern over losing access to this tool.
Put another way, the fact that Trump can both defend China’s retained control over TikTok and simultaneously end his post by lamenting “a MAJOR THREAT TO DEMOCRACY” represents a pretty supreme height of hypocrisy.
