Thursday was a sickening day for TikTok. Its CEO Shou Zi Chew came to Congress flanked by low-energy and likely highly-compensated “influencers.” He left looking queasy, like he’d just been force-fed a dish of FDA-condemned “NyQuil Chicken” — the infamous recipe popularized by users of his platform.
Time after time, Chew was thanked by both Republicans and Democrats for doing the impossible: making members of both parties on the Energy and Commerce Committee unite against his own company.
While TikTok’s fate is still uncertain, the Biden White House’s distance from his fellow Democrats is curious. In a separate hearing yesterday, secretary of state Antony Blinken said in response to questioning from Representative Ken Buck that TikTok “should be ended one way or another.”
So, why is the president so reluctant to act? Perhaps because TikTok’s communist tentacles have a vice grip into Biden’s inner sanctum: both his son and top aide are one step removed from TikTok’s enforcers.
Immediately following the hearing, Fox News reported that the man sitting directly behind Chew, TikTok lobbyist Michael Beckerman, previously worked as a strategic business development advisor for Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, which was affiliated with Rosemont Seneca Partners, a private equity business co-founded by… Hunter Biden and John Kerry’s stepson.
Beckerman was directly referenced in the hearing by Representative Gary Palmer, who told Chew that “personnel is policy. Everyone in this room understands that. Except maybe you.” Palmer went on to ask about Beckerman’s infamous refusal to condemn China’s genocide on Jake Tapper’s show as Beckerman stared on over Chew’s shoulder.
Beyond the direct Biden family tie that TikTok has, The Spectator previously reported that TikTok is retaining SKDK, the firm founded by Biden’s Mao Zedong-loving senior advisor, Anita Dunn — and that TikTok also hired Jamal Brown, who had previously worked as Biden’s campaign spokesman.
The president’s reluctance to fully ban the app, which is banned from the White House and the federal government, is even stranger when considering how united both parties were against TikTok. The hearing kicked off with the top Republican and Democrat on the committee, Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Frank Pallone agreeing with each other constantly.
At one point, Representative Buddy Carter welcomed Chew to “the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” saying that “we may not always agree on how to get there,” but that both parties share grave concerns about TikTok.
During the hearing, Chew leaned on TikTok’s planned Project Texas, its unfinished plan, which the app claims will be able to house Americans’ data in Texas. But, everyone from Democrats like Pallone (who called it “simply not acceptable”) and Angie Craig (who said it “just doesn’t pass the smell test”) to Republicans like August Pfluger, lit into Chew. Pfluger told him that it’s an offense to Texas for the state to share the name with this plan.
“Please rename your project,” the Texas Republican told Chew. “Texas is not the appropriate name. We stand for freedom and transparency and we don’t want your project.”
Some of the hearing’s most dramatic moments occurred when TikTok lept into real-time content moderation. Representative Kat Cammack played a TikTok video where a user pledged to murder Representative Rodgers during this hearing. Immediately after, the video — which had been public for over a month — was removed. Subsequently, Pfluger shared a video posted by basketball star Enes Kanter Freedom, whose account was suspended months ago after he posted a video of China’s human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. Kanter Freedom said that his account was magically unsuspended during the hearing.
“They banned me a while ago and they literally unbanned me while he was asking the CEO question about my account,” he told me. This convenient point was underscored by Representative Randy Weber, who asked Chew if they should “plan to have a committee hearing” every time they need real-time responses from TikTok about content moderation. “It’s no secret to us that TikTok is still under the thumb of the CCP,” Weber said.
Weber also pressed Chew about his personal finances, which Chew said he would rather keep private. Weber seized on this, saying that “we prefer to keep [Americans’ data] private,” just like how you prefer to keep your stock information private. In response to questioning from Representative Morgan Griffith, Chew confirmed he owned shares in both TikTok and its CCP-controlled parent company, ByteDance.
TikTok’s frosty reception continued after the hearing. “The clock is ticking on TikTok,” Representative Guy Reschenthaler told me. “Having TikTok is like welcoming the CCP into your house, asking them to dig through all your stuff, and letting them take whatever they want,” Representative Max Miller said. “The Chinese communists are stealing our data and poisoning our culture. The hearing this week showed that it isn’t safe for Americans to use it. Banning TikTok only makes sense.”
The next steps for the app are unclear. Despite the committee Democrats bashing TikTok, a lot of their colleagues in Congress continue to use the platform, including Representatives Jeff Jackson, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Jon Ossoff and Rashida Tlaib, who have over 10 million followers between them. Additionally, American Bridge, one of the Democrats’ most important outside groups, has a track record of spending six figures on digital influencer programs that include TikTokkers telling voters in swing states how evil Republicans are… using software tied to a government conducting an ongoing genocide against Muslims.
In the void being left by the Biden White House, Senator Tom Cotton proposed two novel steps moving forward: TikTok’s CEO should be “deported immediately and never allowed to re-enter our country,” and that “every employee of TikTok in our country should be forced to register as a foreign agent, as should every one of their lobbyists, PR flaks, and lawyers.”
This would horrible news for the trio of Biden allies in Beckerman, SKDK, and Brown.
