Rep. Gallagher Joins the Hugh Hewitt Show

Описание: This morning, Rep. Gallagher joined the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the status of his bipartisan TikTok bill being taken up in the Senate this week. The legislation, which would force a separation of TikTok from its CCP-controlled parent company ByteDance, passed the House 352-65 last week.

Read highlights of the conversation below.

Hugh Hewitt: I read a story in the Washington Post, "The Five Lies about TikTok." I really couldn't believe it. It was a pure propaganda piece... What is going on with it, this should have already passed.

Rep. Gallagher: What's going on here is really an unprecedented lobbying effort. TikTok has about seven different lobbying firms on retainer. They spent half a million dollars just in the final quarter of last year alone on lobbying and they're doing everything they can to spread lies about the bill. If you just look at what they pushed in the popup ad that they forced on all of their users when the bill was going through the House of Representatives, it was filled with lies about the bill. They're calling it an outright ban. That is of course, not true. What we're trying to force is a divestiture. That is what we're after. But to say that China does not, that the Chinese Communist Party more specifically, does not control TikTok just misunderstands the reality of how the economy works in China. There is no such thing as a private company in China.... I am urging my colleagues in the Senate to take up this bill. It passed with 352 votes in the House of Representatives. The White House has signaled that they will sign the bill if and when it passes the Senate. But we can't afford to allow this to linger, particularly as we get closer to an election. The unclassified Director of National Intelligence Assessment has already said, this is unclassified, that TikTok is being used by the People's Republic of China to meddle in American elections.

Hugh Hewitt: Now, Congressman Gallagher, if we can't do this, what else do you think we can do?

Rep. Gallagher: This is a basic test of how resilient our republic is from our communist adversary. To your point, Hugh, I mean, a Chinese company couldn't buy your radio station, they couldn't buy Fox News. We have well established precedent regarding foreign adversary ownership when it comes to traditional media. Given the fact that TikTok is increasingly the go-to news source for Americans under the age of 30, the same precedent should apply in this case. And as for any concerns about the First Amendment, or free speech, you are a vaunted constitutional lawyer, Hugh, you can push back if I'm wrong, but this bill doesn't say anything with respect to content or speech, we're talking about foreign adversary ownership of a social media application. And if the ownership changes, people can continue to post whatever they want on social media. Now, then we'll have a separate debate, which is the debate that all parents should have about social media in general, whether it's an American-owned company or a Chinese-owned company, and the correlation between social media use and anxiety, depression and suicide. But that is not what this bill addresses. This bill addresses the fact that our foremost adversary now has control over what is the dominant news platform for Americans under the age of 30. That is crazy to allow that to continue, and if we allow it to continue, that's national self suicide, and basically us surrendering in the early stages of the new Cold War.

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Congressman Mike Gallagher has represented Wisconsin’s 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017. Mike was born and raised in Green Bay, where he now lives with his wife Anne and two daughters.

Mike served for seven years on active duty in the United States Marine Corps, including two deployments to Iraq. Mike also served as the lead Republican staffer for the Middle East and Counterterrorism on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and worked in the private sector at an energy and supply chain management company in Green Bay.

Mike currently serves as Chairman of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, as Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, and on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. From 2019-2021 he served as Co-Chairman of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

For more information visit: https://gallagher.house.gov

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