Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says the legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States unless its parent company ByteDance sells the social media platform “will benefit” the app’s users, adding that “TikTok needs to be an American company.”
Cruz told Fox News on Wednesday that he heard “from our intelligence agency a lot of the details of what we’re facing,” citing “espionage and surveillance,” as well as the Chinese Communist Party pushing propaganda and self-harm onto children, before stressing that TikTok needs to become “an American company.”
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Cruz broke down his concerns regrading TikTok into two categories, first citing, “espionage and surveillance of Americans.”
“Roughly 170 million Americans use TikTok,” the senator said. “The Chinese Communist government has operational control of TikTok.”
“It has the ability to engage in espionage and surveillance of what people are saying, where they are physically on their phones, what they’re doing on their phones,” Cruz added. “I think that is a profound threat to the privacy of American.”
Secondly, Cruz said, “TikTok is being used as a vehicle for the Chinese Communist Party to push propaganda, to push its own political agenda — pushing propaganda that benefits China.”
The senator explained:
There’s an academic study that compared hashtags trending on Instagram vs. TikTok, and hashtags such as, “Free Tibet” or “Tiananmen Square” trended much more on Instagram than TikTok. The most stunning was the hashtag “Hong Kong protests,” which trended 175 times more on Instagram than it did on TikTok. And the only rationale explanation for that is the Chinese communist government deliberately suppressing that speech.
We also have very real concerns about the Chinese communist government using TikTok to push pro-Hamas propaganda, to push Osama bin Laden and anti-America propaganda — and to push self harm, to push really destructive materials to our kids.
“So, I’m glad the House acted,” Cruz said of the legislation. “I think China needs to sell TikTok.”
“I think TikTok needs to be an American company, controlled by Americans, and not communist China,” Cruz affirmed.
As Breitbart News reported, last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the bill that could force ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months or face a ban from the United States.
“It passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, 50 to nothing, so every single member of the committee voted for it,” Cruz said of the legislation, noting that the bill is “now in the Senate.”
“My committee, the Senate Commerce Committee, has jurisdiction over it,” Cruz noted, adding that they will “also consider amendments to the bill.”
“I can’t say the exact bill that passed the House is likely to pass [the Senate],” Cruz said. “But I’m glad the House acted to address what I think is a very serious threat.”
Elsewhere, Cruz insisted that the legislation is “not about getting rid” of TikTok, according to a report by The Hill.
“What it is about is forcing China to divest, getting TikTok out of control of the Chinese Communist Party, getting it in the hands of an American company, getting it in the hands of anyone other than China or an enemy of America,” Cruz said.
“I think it is very important, and will benefit the users of TikTok and everyone else, too,” the senator added.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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