Congressional assault on Tiktok is about everything except defending Americans
Members of Congress are making a big deal out of attacking Tiktok as being owned by the China government because they don't want you to look at China government investments in their own states.
By Ray Hanania
FREE/Politics/Saturday, May 4, 2025
Why believe the truth America, when the lie is easier to swallow?
Members of Congress have demanded that Tiktok's parent company ByteDance divest from China and find new owners, or face a censorship ban in America that could spread to some of its Western Allies.
Tiktok is the fastest growing social media platform and features shorts video clips from around the world.
Members of Congress have asserted that the Chinese Government has access to data from users that can be used against American interests, although they have never given one example of what kinds of data breaches might exist.
Locations of the largest investments in 40 American states that expose American data more than the social media Tiktok that the members of Congress who represent those states don’t want you to know about. Source, Public Citizen.
The truth is, though, that the members of Congress, including Republicans and many conservative Democrats, are using Tiktok as a deflection from their failed policies to challenge the Red Communist rivalry and presumed menace.
Republicans and conservative Democrats who are screaming the most about Tiktok and Chinese invasion of our economy and data have done nothing to stop China's investments in states they represent.
The Washington D.C.-based non-profit public advocacy organization Public Citizen released a study in 2017 that documents 399 major Chinese investments in 40 American states totaling more than $120 billion, with 60 percent owned by companies with Chinese government "connections." You can click here to look at the most recent database yourself which identifies 399 investments of $50 million or more.
The one thing about many members of Congress is that they are hypocrites first and representatives of the people second. They do a poor job of presenting facts about challenges this country faces and instead rely on easier-to-sell perceptions and pejorative stereotypes that they often exaggerated or completely fabricate.
Yes. Start accepting the fact that many members of our Congress, members of the House and the Senate, lie to twist issues to fit their personal agendas and to protect their political offices.
Here's the truth that Congress doesn't want you to know. The more than $120 billion in Chinese-owned assets in their states bring economic benefit to their voters and they don't want to disrupt that.
So, they instead deflect their outrage towards a social media platform in which 67 percent of its users are teenagers between the ages of 17 and 18?
Just look at the hypocrisy and the lies by some of the members of Congress who are trying to get you focus on Tiktok and away from what China has been investing in their states.
Take for example the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state who said recently that Tiktok represents “an immediate threat” from China. She called for the short-form video app to be banned in the US because Chinese data and information mining is a threat.
What Rep. Rodgers doesn't address is the fact that 10 of the largest Chinese government-tied investments on the database I linked are located in the state she represents.
Four of the investments total more than $368 million, sourced from major financial institutions like Fortune, but with values for six of the other investments untallied because of red tape protecting them.
The investments in Rodgers' home state of Washington include: Entertainment, publishing, retail, education, electronics, software, batteries, agriculture & food, business services, ICT/Media, internet broadband, data centers, aviation, and software.
Then there is Democrat U.S. Senator Mark Warner, who served as the governor of Virginian from 2002 until 2006, and then was elected to the Senate in 2009.
There are five major China investments in Virginia with three of them totaling $11.58 billion in value. Two of them don't have publicly disclosed values.
The investments in Virginia, Warner's home state, are described as being in Consumer Products &Services (e.g. textiles, apparel, furniture), agriculture and food, health & Biotech, Energy, Extraction/Mining/Logging, and Financial services.
California Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy has a lot to answer for too. China-government tied companies and investments total $32.4 billion.
Are you the public really that stupid that you simply accept anything a member of Congress tells you? Do you really believe China's Communist government gets more information from Tiktok than from their huge investments in the American economy?
China investments are in every business and industry including in Big Pharma, computer software, internet, technology, retail, healthcare, land and many of the largest retail corporations.
It's ok for that to continue, but damn, we had better get rid of Tiktok?
The truth is that divesting China investments from America would have a huge negative economic impact on the taxpayers of those 40 states and those elected officials don't want to disrupt that, or put a spotlight on it.
But they don't want to seem weak, either so they makeup this fake accusation that somehow Tiktok is stealing vital information from 18 year olds.
The truth is, the politicians are most angry with Tiktok because it broadcasts videos of Israel's war crimes targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip. Tiktok is the one social media that has not censored those videos, which have been basically "self-censored" by the vast majority of the mainstream news media.
And that ties back to Congress members, too, who receive hundreds of millions of dollars from Israel's government to protect Israel from being exposed for its war crimes and violations of international laws.
I love to republish the links to show you how the vast majority of members of the House and the Senate have received millions over the years to shut up about Israel's atrocities and actions that violate human rights and the Rule of Law against Muslims AND Christian civilians.
America may not be the Democracy that it claims to be, plagued by hypocrisies, lies and associations with some of the world's most ruthless and unDemocratic tyrants in the world.
But Americans are free to do one thing. They can believe the lies over the truth. Politicians can lie and hide the truth. And the major mainstream news media, which is owned by 15 of the nation's wealthiest billionaires who protect their investments by soft-censoring reporting away from anything that might cause them serious harm.
Click here for data on 15 wealthiest investors.
Click here on a detailed breakdown of media ownership.
Wakeup America. You will never be free until you embrace the sometimes unwelcome truth rather than the happy lie.
These esteemed members of Congress would have some 'splaining to do" when the China-based companies in their states close up shop and unemployment in their state goes sky-high. Got some 'esplaining to do, Ricky!