The campaign for President Joe Biden, who is turning 81 on Monday, is so "desperate" to stem the hemorrhaging of young-voter support it is weighing using TikTok, a "Chinese propaganda app," Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., warned Sunday.
"The campaign is desperate to do anything, even use a Chinese propaganda app to try to offset Joe Biden's decline in the polls," Cotton told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures.
"Joe Biden's campaign shouldn't do it, and President Biden should sign a total ban of TikTok into law next month."
Cotton noted using a banned app to try to win reelection is a bad look.
"It's not just that governors have banned it, Joe Biden has banned it," Cotton said. "We passed legislation last year that banned TikTok on U.S. government devices.
"Yet, Joe Biden's campaign is now thinking, apparently, about going on to TikTok. So just think about that. You have all of these senior aides at the White House who carry two phones, one government phone — on which they can't download TikTok — and one personal campaign phone on which they'll be obsessively checking TikTok to look at Joe Biden's campaign account."
TikTok has had a problematic past in using its influence with American youths to spin political narratives — including TikTok "Stans" attacking former President Donald Trump's campaign by reserving spots at his first COVID-19 rally just to not show up — and spread Chinese propaganda.
"What you're seeing with TikTok over the last few days makes it clear that TikTok is not just going to be used to promote communist China but to undermine the United States and our friends at every turn," Cotton added. "It's going to happen in Israel but it's also happening in what's going on at home here as well."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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