Bipartisan calls to ban ‘imminent threat’ TikTok after House hearing with Chinese app’s CEO

There is a bipartisan push on Capitol Hill to ban TikTok despite warnings Democrats could lose millennial and Gen Z voters in 2024 if they take action against the highly popular video social media app.

A large group of Republicans and Democrats have increased their calls for action to be taken against the platform after TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday.

‘What the hearing made clear to me was that TikTok should be banned in the United States of America to address the immediate threat and we also need a national data privacy law,’ the panel’s Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers told CNN’s Jake Tapper during an interview on the State of the Union program.

‘I would say there is an immediate threat via TikTok from the Chinese Communist Party,’ the Republican from Washington state added. ‘That is the reason that I believe we need to ban TikTok immediately. It is a national security threat.’ 

‘It united Republicans and Democrats on the committee as to the urgent need for us to take action.’

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said that Americans need to realize the threat TikTok poses that other social media platforms do not due to its ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

And Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner told CBS Face the Nation on Sunday morning that another alternative solution to a ban is relocating the source code for TikTok to a country that isn’t connected to the CCP.

‘The politician in me thinks you’re going to literally lose every voter under 35, forever,’ Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned Democrats in a recent interview with Bloomberg about the repercussions if TikTok is banned.

Rep. Krishnamoorthi said during an interview with ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning: ‘Good policy makes good politics.’

‘And in this particular case we have to recognize that while TikTok is another social media app – and we have a generalized concern about these social media apps – it’s different in kind from any other social media app because its parent company is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party,’ he added.

‘That is why on a bipartisan basis we’ve banned TikTok from all federal devices,’ the Illinois Democrat explained. ‘And that’s why the FBI director, the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA director and the entire intelligence community believes that this is a severe risk to our national security and we have to deal with it.’ 

McMorris Rodgers said in her Sunday morning interview: ‘TikTok cannot be trusted, that they have repeatedly lied.So they cannot be trusted to protect our data. They cannot be trusted to ensure that our children’s mental health is a priority.’

‘I think there’s a lot of creative activity that goes on on TikTok,’ Warner told CBS host Margaret Brennan on Sunday. ‘But I absolutely believe that the market – if TikTok goes away – the market will provide another platform. And at the end of the day, that could be an American company, that could be a Brazilian company, that could be an Indian company – all those companies operate within a set of rules –’

Brennan cut-in to ask Warner if he’s worried about ‘political costs’ of banning the social media app.

‘If at the end of the day, you could end up with a forced sale and that forced sale also makes sure that the core algorithm – the source code – resides someplace different than China, that could be an outcome that would be successful as well,’ Warner explained.

‘But at the end of the day, you cannot have American data collected, nor can you have the ability for the Communist Party to use TikTok as propaganda.’