David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday that President Joe Biden is “insisting” on banning TikTok and would be held accountable if the ban is implemented, urging voters to take notice.
The US House of Representatives voted 360 to 58 on Saturday to pass bipartisan legislation that would give Chinese TikTok owner ByteDance about nine months to sell its US operations or face a ban.
The bill has now been sent to the Senate. If it passes, Biden has said he would sign it into law.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday that Biden will “be responsible for banning TikTok. He’s the one pushing it to shut down, and he’s doing it to help his Facebook friends become richer and more dominant.”
Trump then urged younger voters, who make up a significant portion of TikTok’s user base, to consider Biden’s stance on Election Day.
However, when he was president in 2020, Trump himself tried to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat on national security grounds, but was blocked by the courts.
TikTok, which says it does not and will not share U.S. user data with the Chinese government, argues the ban tramples the First Amendment free speech rights of its app’s 170 million users in the country.
Over the weekend, the company told employees in an email seen by Reuters that once Biden signs the legislation, “we will go to court to pursue legal action. We will continue to fight because this law is a clear violation of the First Law.” Amendment”.
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A White House spokesman said Monday: “We do not want to ban apps like TikTok. What we want – and what the legislation we support will do – is to ensure that TikTok becomes the property of a US company so that ours and our children’s sensitive personal information is protected.” the data stays here, not sent to China, and so that Americans’ understanding and views cannot be manipulated by algorithms potentially controlled by the PRC.”
Trump recently said restricting TikTok would strengthen Facebook’s Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:)’s Meta Platforms, a platform he criticized after his access was revoked following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. His account was reinstated last year.
Under the law, app stores operated by Apple (NASDAQ:), Alphabet-owned Google (NASDAQ:) and others cannot legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled apps after the sale deadline.
Biden’s re-election campaign joined TikTok in February. The Trump campaign did not do this.