In a conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) acknowledged that banning TikTok has such strong support in Congress because the social media platform has hurt Israel’s public relations battle.
“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially, TikTok or other entities of that nature,” Romney said at the McCain Institute this past Friday. “If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”
The official justification for targeting TikTok is the unfounded allegation that it’s a Chinese spy tool because its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. But Romney’s comments suggest the real purpose of the renewed push to ban the app after a similar effort failed years ago was to censor news coming out of Gaza and pro-Palestinian content.
Blinken blamed social media in general when asked by Romney why Israel was losing the global PR war. Palestinian journalists have been able to broadcast to the whole world the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza using social media, including graphic videos of dead or wounded children being dug out of rubble following an Israeli airstrike.
“Now, of course, we’re on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken said. “And, of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. You have a social media ecosystem, environment in which context, history, facts get lost and the emotion, the impact of images dominate. We can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very very challenging effect on the narrative.”
A bill to ban TikTok was included in the $95 billion foreign military spending package President Biden signed into law last month. The legislation gives ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, or else it will get banned. But ByteDance has vowed to fight the ban in court and said it would rather shutdown TikTok than sell.
Are these the same Republicans that have been howling about the Democrats trampling on the 1st Amendment? They are right about the Democrats. But the first time the 1st Amendment goes against Israel, the Republicans are outraged.
Freedom of speech is under attack by both major parties.
It is a UNIPARTY. There is no “democratic party. There is no “republican party”. Only a UNIPARTY. Judging Freedom with Judge Napolitano interviews Professor Jeffry Sachs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdxt23fKLIg
The founding fathers warned us about tyrants like them. Too bad we didn’t listen
Israel is inflicting a genocide on Palestinians, and he worries about Israel’s public relations battle!!!???
‘ Course.
The Repugninants score another devastating blow against the Demo-Rats to get ahead in the final competition to find out who is most despicable. But I have faith the Demo-Rats can still compete.
It’s neck and neck … “and down the stretch they come …”
Mr. Romney demonstrates well the old Voltaire dictum of (paraphrasing) know who rules you by whom you can’t criticize.
Apparently, on this one issue, they are willing to throw (arguably) the constitution’s most important passage (freedom of speech) down the toilet in service of the nation that must not be mentioned.
So too the restrictions on free speech, privacy, and association.
Don’t these creeps know they are trashing the constitution? But, it’s pay back time in Wash. for all those Zionist linked goodies they hand out to Wash. They are investments that ‘keep on giving.’ Good business people make sure they get a good return on their investments–in blood.
Since TikTok is owned and operated by a foreign country it is not protect by the US Constitution. Forbidding a foreign company from operating in the USA is not against the US Constitution.
Neither the First, nor the Fourth, nor the Fifth Amendment magically excludes foreigners from the protections they provide.
TikTok is neither owned nor operated by a country.
But even if those things weren’t true, a policy doesn’t have to be unconstitutional to be both stupid and evil.
It is mujlti national like a lot of corps. and the US has many investors in Tik Tok. Plus, it’s just that Wash. is afraid of what Americans are saying and that it may wake people up to their corrupt government, of, by, and for the politicians and their campaign donors like AIPAC and the war industry, to name just two.
theyre using antisemitism as an excuse to make us less free its for shame