During a Monday appearance on Newsmax’s “John Bachman Now,” Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) revealed that he planned to file legislation to ban the Chinese government-influenced social media platform TikTok.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the only bipartisan issue in the country is that America should ban TikTok and yet it isn't happening.
Find ONE person in Congress or the Biden administration arguing TikTok should stay. I want names or I want some news explaining the holdup.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 21, 2022
When asked by the show’s host about the threat posed by TikTok and whether there was any discussion in Congress to ban the social media app, Fallon stated: “I’m gonna file legislation to do that.”
The Texas congressman then pointed out that countries such as India and Pakistan have already banned the platform, and discussed the fact that TikTok poses significant risks to users’ personal data.
“People [on TikTok] need to understand there are Terms of Service. This is owned by the Chinese Communist Party, and what their terms of service essentially say in layman’s terms, is everything that’s on your phone — all the files, data, the contacts — they can use, for any reason,” Fallon said, adding that the app “can even have keystroke logging, where they can track… the actual buttons that you’re pressing on your keyboard. Which means that they can compromise passwords.”
“It’s very dangerous,” he argued. “It’s a matter of national security, and we should absolutely ban it.”
John Bachman, the show’s host, also credited Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) for acknowledging that then-President Donald Trump was right to ban TikTok during his time in office.
Warner made those comments during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, arguing that the social media platform is an “enormous threat.”
NEW—Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:
“TikTok is a enormous threat.”
“So if you’re a parent and you got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned.” pic.twitter.com/qdggWdKFz1
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) November 21, 2022
Fallon also discussed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) plan to remove several top Democrats from committee assignments if he becomes Speaker of the House in January.
The Texas congressman pointed out that current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) actually set the “new precedent” which gave McCarthy the idea in the first place.
“[The House Republicans and Democrats] used to police their own back in the day; that was the tradition, and that had been the precedent that was set in Congress for years,” Fallon said.
He then argued that Pelosi established a “new precedent” by “reaching over the aisle” to remove former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from their House committee assignments following public controversies.
Fallon then asserted that McCarthy should go forward with his plan to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her committee assignment — calling her out for making “many” antisemitic remarks during her short time in politics and lamenting that “she always falls back to, ‘Oh, they’re attacking me because I’m Muslim … I’m a woman … I’m a person of color.’”
He also claimed that Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) “will be gone, too,” adding: “It’s about their actions.”
