A Democratic senator has admitted that former President Donald Trump was right about the dangers posed by a popular social media app.
In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said that Trump was correct when he drew attention to the security concerns posed by the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, specifically claiming that the app threatens Americans’ privacy.
“Well, I think Donald Trump was right. I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat,” Warner said. “So, if you’re a parent and you’ve got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing.”
Warner is not the first public official to voice concerns that the app is being used by the Chinese government to steal Americans’ data.
On Nov. 2, CNN Business reported that FCC commissioner Brendan Carr had called for a ban on the app, citing concerns that China was using TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to steal Americans’ data. He compared it to other Chinese companies, such as Huawei and ZTE, who have been banned from the United States over similar concerns.
“For me, this is taking what I’ve learned in the Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile context, where we’re looking at possibly nefarious data flows, and bringing it to bear in terms of this issue,” Carr said.
It was this concern over the violation of Americans’ privacy by the Chinese government via TikTok that lead former President Trump to attempt to ban the site in 2020. However, a federal judge later overruled him citing free speech concerns.
At the time, Trump was attacked for suggesting that the Chinese-owned app posed a national security risk, but now here we are two years later, and several other senior officials have come out and said he was right.
TikTok is a serious national security threat. Its parent company ByteDance has access to the personal data of thousands of Americans and is possibly funneling it to the government of one of our top foreign adversaries, the Chinese Communist Party.
Every day seems to bring more evidence to light that this is the case. The question is: How has this obvious threat been allowed to operate in plain sight for so long?
Perhaps the answer has something to do with the fact that for the past few years now, TikTok has become the social media app of choice for leftist politicians and their supporters.
Over the past few years, leftists have used TikTok to expose a wider audience to their bizarre — and often offensive — statements on politics and culture, as shown by the Twitter page Libs of TikTok.
In the recent midterm elections, TikTok was used by Democrats to reach out to younger voters and encourage them to vote. This possibly had a massive part in halting the predicted “red wave.”
Last year, it was reported that drug cartels along the U.S.-Mexico border were using TikTok to recruit young men to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.
In this light, it makes perfect sense why the Democrats have been so willing to ignore the very real threat posed by TikTok. It allows them to spread their propaganda to a wider audience, and it allows them to violate the law by funneling more potential voters into the country.
Let’s face it, Donald Trump was right: This is a massive threat to our national security. It is long past time we did something to ensure that our adversaries do not have a way of collecting our data and possibly using it against us.