Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have clashed on the Senate floor over a bill to ban the use of social media app TikTok in the United States.
Mr. Hawley criticized the app from the Senate on Nov. 8 for showing pro-Hamas propaganda to users since the outbreak of war between the terrorist group and Israel.
“Where are these students and young people, teenagers, where are they hearing this? Where are they seeing it, where are they being fed this propaganda?” Mr. Hawley pressed.
“Because propaganda it is. At least one of these answers is that they are finding it on TikTok,” he added.
Mr. Hawley also called the app a “back door for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to track the keystrokes and personal information of every American who has the app on their phone.”
Mr. Hawley says Chinese laws under the CCP require corporations to make information and data available to Chinese authorities on request.
TikTok Ban Could Be Electoral Disaster for Republicans
In March, Mr. Hawley delivered similar remarks on the Senate floor. He called for unanimous consent on his bill, the No TikTok on United States Devices Act. At the time, Sen. Rand Paul objected, as was the case again this time.Mr. Paul believes that banning TikTok is a First Amendment issue and would promote government censorship. He believes a better solution to combat the influence of TikTok is to “counter flawed ideas or falsities with more speech and better arguments.”
“The banning TikTok strategy, comes while the GOP simultaneously complains of liberal U.S. social media companies canceling and censoring conservatives. So without a hint of irony, many of these same, quote, conservatives now agitate to censor viewpoints they don’t like,” Mr. Paul said.
“Do we really want to emulate China’s speech bans? Do we want to intrude on the lives of Americans, deprive them of their First Amendment right to receive and consider information?” he added.
Mr. Paul also questioned the overall impact banning the app could have on the Republican Party in future elections.
He called the ban of an app used by primarily young Americans as a “recipe for electoral disaster for Republicans.”
“If there is a better national strategy to permanently lose elections for a generation, I’ve not heard of it,” Mr. Paul said.
Hawley Says Free Speech Not the Issue, Spying Is
Mr. Hawley fired back that the proposed bill has “nothing to do with speech” and has “everything to do with spying.”“Let’s just be clear about one thing: the Chinese Communist government is not covered by the United States’s Bill of Rights,” Mr. Hawley said.
“The Chinese Communist government does not have free speech rights. And we’re not talking about free speech, we’re not talking about speech at all.”
In the letter, Mr. Hawley urges Ms. Yellen to conclude CFIUS’s review of TikTok and to ban all ByteDance-controlled apps currently available to U.S. users.
“TikTok—and its parent company ByteDance—are threats to American national security,” Mr. Hawley said in his letter.
“While data security issues are paramount, less often discussed is TikTok’s power to radically distort the world-picture that America’s young people encounter,” the senator warned.
Mr. Hawley concluded by saying he believes the longer that TikTok is allowed to operate in the United States, the easier it will be for the CCP to “propagandize Americans.”
The Epoch Times contacted TikTok for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.
