On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) stated that President Joe Biden promoting TikTok by briefing stars on the app “is incredibly irresponsible. It is like him sharing our intelligence with Chinese officials,” and criticized Biden for failing to take the China threat seriously and “asking teenagers to do his job for him.”
Hawley said, “Well, let’s start by saying that this shows just how incompetent President Biden is, Jesse, that now he’s asking teenagers to do his job for him. I mean, think about that for a second, this is the president of the United States. It’s bad enough that he’s going around begging dictators to give us oil because he won’t allow Americans to produce our own energy. But now, he’s going to actual teenagers and begging them, on a Chinese-owned social media app, to do his job.”
He added, “I am worried. And this is a White House that is fundamentally unserious when it comes to the China threat. They don’t understand the China threat. They haven’t taken it seriously. And, listen, I tried to get TikTok banned in this country until it was sold to an American company or to another company that was walled off from Beijing. Because the truth is Beijing has a back door into TikTok. All of the data that TikTok collects on you, if you use it, the Beijing government, the [Chinese Communist Party] can see it and use it. This isn’t an app that anybody ought to be promoting, let alone the president of the United States. So, it is incredibly irresponsible. It is like him sharing our intelligence with Chinese officials, which he apparently did. So, I just — it’s a pattern here where this White House doesn’t know what’s going on. They blunder from one chaotic moment, crisis to another.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett