U.S. Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) — both members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — introduced a bipartisan bill to prevent access to the social media app TikTok in the U.S., if its Chinese parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest from it.
Committee Chair Gallagher said in a press release: “This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users.”
He added: “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States. TikTok’s time in the United States is over unless it ends its relationship with CCP-controlled ByteDance.”
[Related: 11 House Republicans Urge CBS To Block Chinese Super Bowl Ads]
TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek responded to the proposed bill and argued: “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
President Joe Biden said he will sign the bill if it makes it through Congress.
Shark Tank star and investor Kevin O’Leary — who has been defending former President Donald Trump after the latter was ordered to pay $355 million in his business fraud case — said he would buy the TikTok app.
On Fox News, O’Leary said: “TikTok will NOT get banned because I’m gonna buy it!” He added: “Somebody’s going to buy it, it won’t be Meta and it won’t be Google, ‘cause…regulator [will] stop that.”
Best known for his Shark Tank stardom, O’Leary’s biggest investment on that show was $2.5 million. TikTok is believed to have a valuation north of $100 billion.
TikTok will NOT get banned because I’m gonna buy it! A syndicate will be formed and somebody’s gonna buy it. It’s worth billions and one of the most successful advertising platforms in social media today.
If we can make TikTok all-American including the servers, I can get this… pic.twitter.com/AdhNox0R59
— Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv) March 9, 2024
Note: Trump — the presumptive GOP presidential nominee — has said on his social media platform that he’s now against the TikTok ban. In 2020, Trump also threatened to ban the app, before realizing a TikTok ban could be advantageous to Meta (formerly known as Facebook), which had banned Trump.