Conflict in MAGA World as Congressional Hawks Challenge Trump’s Promise To ‘Save TikTok’ via Executive Order

Republicans are raising concerns about President Trump’s plan to “save” TikTok, given the national security concerns that led Congress to pass a forced divestiture bill in the first place. Mr. Trump, who is now floating the idea of partially nationalizing the app, does have the power to extend the suspension of its usage in America for up to 90 days, but that’s only if a sale is being negotiated, which, as of Sunday night, does not appear to be in the cards.TikTok went dark Saturday night, telling its users in a message that they “are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.” By Sunday morning, Mr. Trump was calling for the sell-by deadline — which is Sunday — to be extended while a deal is worked out. Following the president-elect’s demands, TikTok said it would resume operations.The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Cotton, said that the social media app was wrong to simply say that they can resume services with the promise of an executive order from the incoming president. The forced divestiture bill, he said, allows a whole host of legal officials from coast to coast to sue or issue sanctions to the app and those service providers like Apple and Microsoft if they continue operations. “Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs. Think about it,” Mr. Cotton wrote on X in response to TikTok’s announcement on Sunday.Senator Graham raised similar concerns, saying that as long as the app’s Communist Chinese parent company, ByteDance, owns the platform, it should not be allowed to operate within America.“I know the app is popular, but the business model allows the CCP to sit on the parent company’s board. When the Communist Party speaks, everyone who does business with them follows their demands,” Mr. Graham said in a post on X. “If TikTok goes dark permanently, it’s because ByteDance refused to meet America’s legitimate national security concerns. They will have no one to blame but themselves.”Mr. Trump has floated a number of options to keep the platform operational in America, though his most recent idea is to have a joint venture between the United States government and private investors buy the app. On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump said he would push for the government to buy a 50 percent stake in the company. “I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday morning. “I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up. Without U.S. approval, there is no TikTok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars — maybe trillions,” he added.Mr. Cotton says — without naming him — that the president-elect is wrong in his assertion that the deadline to sell TikTok can simply be extended by executive order. The only way for TikTok to come online, he says, is for its parent company to start the sale process. “Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date. For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China,” Mr. Cotton and Senator Ricketts said in a joint statement on Sunday before the resumption of services was announced. “Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok.”Speaker Johnson on Sunday seemed open to the idea of trying to work out a deal in order to keep TikTok alive, though did not say he would go beyond the 90-day extension currently required by federal law. “There needs to be a sale — a full divestiture — from the Chinese Communist Party. And I think President Trump is the one that can make that deal happen,” Mr. Johnson told NBC News. “We don’t have any confidence in ByteDance. They had 270 days to be exact. The law’s very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works.”One of the most serious concerns that lawmakers have raised about TikTok is not only can it be used as a data collection tool for the Chinese Communist Party, but that the algorithm of the app itself is so powerful that it is making young children more depressed, anxious, and anti-social. On Sunday morning, a Wisconsin Republican, Congressman Glenn Grothman, had his district office building set on fire by an angry teenager who wanted TikTok operations to be restored, according to WISN 12 News. When Congress was first considering the forced divestiture bill in 2024, a teenage girl left a voicemail for Senator Tillis, saying she would “find him and shoot him and cut him into pieces” if he voted for the legislation.

Conflict in MAGA World as Congressional Hawks Challenge Trump’s Promise To ‘Save TikTok’ via Executive Order

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