The TikTok issue has scrambled DC politics up again. House Republicans and conservative Democrats dragged the Democratic caucus into supporting an unconstitutional piece of legislation that would wind up banning TikTok and pissing off tens of millions of Americans who use it. But, as we saw, the bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face being banned in the U.S. passed in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week 50-0.
Republicans were delighted. After all, Trump had banned TikTok with an ineffectual executive order when he was in the White House and this bill by anti-China fanatic Mike Gallagher (R-WI) seemed like it would make Trump’s desires a reality. Except Señor T’s desires seemed to have changed after he met with billionaire scumbag/right-wing mega-donor Jeff Yass. Among all his crackpot tweets on his failed social media site in the last few days, Trump let loose with this one after the Yass meeting, Yass’s hedge fund having a $33 billion stake in ByteDance.
Over the weekend, Mike Solana reported that “Trump’s apparent change of heart in favor of America’s most popular Chinese spy app followed days of ‘libertarian’ Rand Paul’s defense of the company, begging an interesting question. What do Paul and Trump have in common? Allow me: his name is Jeff Yass, a major GOP donor, and an investor in ByteDance (thereby TikTok) presently sitting on a stake in the company worth over $30 billion. For years, Yass has both supported Paul, and lobbied hard against a TikTok divestiture (though never harder, rumor has it, than he lobbied Republicans last week). He has also, for the past couple years of his swampland career, been a fierce opponent of Trump. But all that changed just days before the TikTok drama bubbled over, when he met with the former president for… reasons. Who knows what! And Trump immediately signaled he was ‘back in love’ with Club for Growth, Yass’s super-PAC. A few days after that, Trump turned against the TikTok policy he himself first championed. ‘America First’? Sure, right after China.”
Solana, a hardcore anti-China/TikTok fanatic, noted that “In any case, not every shred of pushback against divestiture is fueled by corruption so transparent. Some of the criticism is merely idiotic. Historically, TikTok divestiture has been attacked on the following grounds: ‘right wing people are trying to ban a left wing platform,’ ‘American tech companies want to dethrone a competitor,’ and ‘Trump said it so I don’t want it!’ The first and third positions are not only unserious, but clearly outdated. Then, the second position is actually compelling, though more charitably framed in terms of our nation’s grossly unfair trade asymmetry. The CCP has itself banned— the real kind of ban, where a company is actually, literally banned from operating— every single American social media company. Why should their social media companies be permitted to sell unencumbered into the American market? In other words, critiques here are right in the sense that trade retaliation is probably in part motivating the push for TikTok’s divestiture (including for me personally), but wrong on the issue. China’s ongoing trade war is a bad thing, actually, and we should obviously fight back… Famously, Vivek [Ramaswamy, whose campaign was given millions of dollars by Yas] pivoted from the position TikTok should be banned because it is a uniquely powerful form of ‘digital fentanyl,’ to the position TikTok should not be banned because— I kid you not— he had dinner with Jake Paul, who told him TikTok was important to the youth. But Vivek’s message Thursday evening, in support of a fairly distorted depiction of Trump’s position, really left me wondering: what does this guy actually want? … While popular figures in Trump’s orbit, from Hope Hicks to David Urban, were recently bought by ByteDance, my sense is there is nonetheless too much momentum for divestiture, and Trump doesn’t want to fully torch his anti-globalist reputation. As bad as it looks— on account of it is actually bad— it’s worth keeping in mind Trump is sufficiently influential among Republicans that he could probably kill the divestiture overnight if that’s what he really wanted. Instead, he published a transparently silly post, clearly in exchange for money, and did not explicitly call to stop the bill. In other words, the man said ‘Suckerberg’ and called it a night, but ByteDance is still on the chopping block. That feels significant to me, and my sense is he is trying now to have his Yass and eat it too. How that goes? Tbd.
According to John Bresnahan, Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio the bill is supposed to hit the floor tomorrow. They also noted that Yass gave MAGA Mike a quarter million dollars for his leadership PAC, on top of the $10 million he’s given the MM-controlled Congressional Leadership Fund. Kellyanne Conway, an unregistered lobbyist, is being paid by the Club for Growth to advocate for TikTok. “All this Trump-related activity,” wrote Bresnahan, Sherman an Desiderio, “has caused a big headache inside the House GOP leadership. Johnson, Scalise and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik— a possible Trump VP pick— are all solidly behind the TikTok bill. Stefanik is a cosponsor. But if Trump is against it, can House Republicans move forward with it? There have been some efforts by the GOP leadership to have Trump allies— especially in the national security realm— lobby Trump on the bill… The legislation is coming to the floor under suspension of the rules, which will require a two-thirds majority for passage…. [E]ven if the House passes the TikTok bill, there’s no guarantee about its fate in the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer isn’t committing to putting it on the floor just yet.”
I wonder if Yass offered to pay some of Trump’s legal fines. I wouldn’t put it past the two of them to cook up a deal. Or even a deal with China.
Yesterday, Señor T tried explaining why he flip-flopped on banning TikTok. He was as incoherent as usual. Annie Karni and Jonathan Swan reported he was on CNBC where he said “that he still considered TikTok a national security threat, but that banning it would make young people ‘go crazy.’ He added that any action harming the platform would benefit Facebook, which he called an ‘enemy of the people. Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,’ Trump said. ‘There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok,’ he added, ‘but the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media.’”
Trump tap danced on CNBC when they tip-toed around the Yass bribe: "So, I had it done. And then Congress said— well, they ultimately usually fail. You know? They are, like, extremely political, and they’re extremely subject to people called lobbyists, who happen to be very talented, very good, and very rich. I could have banned TikTok; I had it banned just about, I could have gotten it done. But I said, you know what? But I leave it up to you. I didn’t push it too hard, because let them do their own research and development. And they decided not to do it. But as you know, I was at the point where I could’ve gotten it done if I wanted to. I sort of said, you guys decide, you make that decision."
“Trump’s flip-flop on TikTok puts House Republicans in a very awkward position because it forces them to choose between supporting Trump or standing up to China,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist. “Voters on both sides of the aisle do not trust China to play by any meaningful set of rules and believe that China is determined to get away with whatever it can get away with, and that would apply to China’s control over TikTok.”
I spoke with one Democrat today who said he think the civil liberties questions are paramount and that “we don’t stop China by becoming China.” He also said the Republicans are botching this up so badly that there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll pull the bill tomorrow and he’d rather not wade into this fight if he doesn’t have to. But he’s made up his mind— he’s voting against it.
Karni and Swan wrote that “‘Trump’s flip-flop on TikTok puts House Republicans in a very awkward position because it forces them to choose between supporting Trump or standing up to China,’ said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist. ‘Voters on both sides of the aisle do not trust China to play by any meaningful set of rules and believe that China is determined to get away with whatever it can get away with, and that would apply to China’s control over TikTok.’”
And speaking of not trusting someone to play by any meaningful set of rules, Trump also said Yass didn’t bribe him to oppose the legislation, something no one in Washington believes.
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