GOP Rep. Gallagher: Americans Should Delete Their TikTok App

EXCERPT:

GALLAGHER: "They should. And I recognize, particularly as a younger member of Congress, this will make me very unpopular with your teenagers and many others. But the fundamental problem is this, Jake: TikTok is owned by ByteDance. And ByteDance is effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. The editor-in-chief of ByteDance, for example, is the CCP secretary and has talked about making sure all product lines, all business lines follow appropriate political control. So, the question we have to ask is whether we want to give the CCP the ability to track our location, track what websites we visit, even when we're not using the TikTok app itself, and, increasingly, since a large percentage of young Americans use TikTok to get their news, whether we want them to have the ability to selectively edit that news. It's as if, in 1958, given that TikTok is on the cusp of becoming the most powerful media company in America, we would have allowed the KGB and Pravda to buy 'The New York Times,' 'The Chicago Tribune,' 'The Washington Post' all combined. I think this is a bad idea. And I'm proud to say that my bill is now bipartisan. I have a Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi, who is joining me in introducing it. We have heard Senator Mark Warner voice concerns in the Senate. So my hope is that we make that bipartisan case. And now every member of the Senate is on record saying that TikTok is a national security concern and that it should be banned from government phones. So, we're making the case. We have a long way to go legislatively."