Eighteen Republican senators and representatives of the U.S. Congress jointly called on President Joe Biden to close the TikTok Campaign account that his campaign team opened for his campaign last week because doing so would raise national security concerns for them.
The joint letter seen by the media said Biden “ignored the widely proven national security risks of TikTok. If the commander-in-chief is also using this process, how can the federal government warn the American people of its risks?”
The Biden campaign opened a TikTok short video account on February 11 to attract the support of young voters in the U.S. general election this November. A video posted by the Biden campaign last week currently has more than 9.6 million views and a fan base of approximately 162,000 people.
Republican U.S. senators who signed the letter include Marco Rubio, Jerry Moran, John Barrasso, Marsha Blackburn, Rick Scott, and Josh Hawley.
In a joint letter, these senators and representatives called on Biden to “delete your account and publicly acknowledge the national security threat posed by TikTok.”
The media contacted the White House and TikTok separately on Monday (February 19) to seek a reaction to the joint letter but did not receive a response. Biden’s campaign declined to comment.
Last week, senior Democratic Senator Mark Warner expressed dissatisfaction with the national security concerns raised by TikTok (the TikTok Campaign account) and the Biden campaign’s use of this short video platform.
“I think we still need to find a way to follow India’s lead and completely ban TikTok,” said Warner, who currently serves as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’m a little worried about this contradictory statement.”
Nikki Haley, a candidate currently vying for the Republican presidential nomination, once again called for a ban on TikTok on Sunday. “We should have banned it from the beginning. It’s incredibly dangerous,” she said in an interview with FOX.
The U.S. Congress has tried to introduce a bill to ban TikTok (the TikTok Campaign account) or use new tools to restrict it, but the legislative action has been stalled in Congress. Some other members of the U.S. Congress hope that the U.S. Department of Commerce will put ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, headquartered in China, on the export control blacklist.
TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi said at a congressional hearing at the end of last month that about 170 million Americans are currently using TikTok, an increase of 20 million from 150 million a year ago.
The White House said last week that the ban on the installation and use of TikTok on government equipment, approved by Congress in 2022 and signed into law by Biden, remains in effect. Many state governments in the United States have also banned the installation and use of TikTok on government equipment.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), led by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, required TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell their shares in March last year; otherwise, they would face the possibility of the procedure being banned. However, the Biden administration did not take any specific subsequent actions.
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