Trump TikTok Flip-Flop Flummoxes China Hawks

Plus: It’s discharge petition day. Don’t get too excited.

Photo by GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images

Congress is advancing a bill that would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to divest of the enormously popular social media platform or face an outright ban on the app in the United States. President Joe Biden said he would sign it into law, and both parties were happily collaborating to advance the national security legislation until a certain one-term former president met with a major donor and decided afterwards to lob a mongoose into the political ball pit.

As president, Donald Trump halfheartedly tried to ban TikTok from operating in the United States. (His executive order targeting the platform had remarkably similar goals to the bill currently under consideration: It required the partial sale of the app to an American company to avoid a U.S. ban. TikTok fought the order in court, and Biden ended up rescinding it a few months after he assumed office.) As a civilian, Trump has maintained a harsh tone on all things China. But that was before the latest news hit about the new bill. Now Trump says that taking away TikTok would make young Americans “go crazy,” and further, it would only bolster Meta’s properties like Instagram and Facebook. “And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” Trump continued. (His comments appear to be the sole reason for a drop in Meta’s stock price that has so far erased about $60 billion of the company’s value.)

Many have pointed out the curious timing of his reversal, which he announced soon after he met with Jeff Yass. Yass is a hedge fund manager, Republican megadonor, and the holder of a significant stake in ByteDance, which is now fighting tooth and nail against Congress’s efforts to limit or ban the app and reduce its significant influence on the public.

It isn’t particularly shocking for Trump to have reversed an earlier position. The man regularly changes his policy positions based on whether someone is flattering him, providing financial assistance to his campaigns, or tending to his legal woes. But this most recent flip-flop is causing an outsized commotion on Capitol Hill, a place where the former president can say, “Jump,” and expect Republicans to respond by leaping off the Russell building. A bill that unanimously advanced through the first procedural stage in the House’s largest standing committee is now losing momentum as it nears a full vote on the House floor, which could come as soon as tomorrow. 

Such is Trump’s power, that he can make rambling, incoherent remarks about things he doesn’t seem to fully understand, and those remarks can cause turbulence in Congress and the stock market. Shortly after Trump announced his new position opposing the TikTok bill, the conservative group FreedomWorks issued a statement defending Chinese investment and discouraging Republicans from backing the bill. (The Heritage Foundation, though, is key voting the bill, making supporting it an overriding priority.)

I sought out a handful of lawmakers last night and this morning to understand which way the wind is blowing for the bill, which everyone expected to sail through the legislative process before Trump spoke out. Here’s what I found. 

In the Senate, typically hawkish Republicans waffled on whether they plan to back the House bill. While many offered general criticisms of TikTok, few seemed ready to commit to a force of sale.

“I’m going hedge you a little bit, but I believe the answer is yes,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told me. “But I don’t want it to have to be a final answer.”

When I asked him why he’s not fully on board yet, Grassley added:

It’s been talked a lot about in the media, but there hasn’t been enough talk among colleagues that I feel that I have the full picture . . . but its relationship [is] to China and the Communist Party, and China is trying to get as much information as they can from Americans.

Several other top senators, such as NRSC Chairman Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), and John Boozman (R-Ark.), offered similarly ambivalent comments on the specific proposal of the current bill. “But I do support getting very aggressive with the use of TikTok,” Boozman added.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told reporters he would object to a unanimous request to pass it in the Senate, which would tee up a longer process to passage, provided it even has a chance of going through after it gets to the floor.

In the House, Republican leaders are moving full steam ahead, with a vote slated for Wednesday, according to Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). One lawmaker predicted the bill is “going to sail” through to the Senate. 

Right on cue, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) came out against the proposal with a lunchtime social media post repeating some of Trump’s complaints about Meta. She also got in some of her own points about Apple manufacturing phones in China, “gender lies,” and a worry about “who and which company may become the enemy tomorrow?” 

Today, House members will receive an FBI briefing on the national security risks and threats that would result from TikTok remaining in Chinese hands. These sorts of briefings can be informative and useful for lawmakers who haven’t yet made up their minds about a piece of legislation with a security aspect, but often their final decision will still come down to politics, especially when Trump gets involved.

TikTok is expected to deploy their CEO, Shou Zi Chew, to Capitol Hill in an attempt to stave off the bill’s passage. (He was last here a year ago to testify about the app’s safety and content in a congressional hearing.) Congress will also be crawling with local TikTok influencers¹ advocating on the company’s behalf.

Strange factions and alliances have emerged in response to this bill. Despite having very different intentions and principles, Trump and FreedomWorks are now aligned against the bill with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.). Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation and House Republican leaders find themselves in the same camp as Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment. Trump has meddled to kill legislation before, most recently by ruining the first realistic shot at immigration and border security reform in a generation. He’s now attempting to do it again, but I’m not sure he’s going to get as clean a result as he did last time.

The Buck stops here

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) announced this afternoon his intent to resign from Congress at the end of next week. Buck previously said he would not seek re-election, creating a wide-open primary in his solidly Republican district. Buck did not give leadership a heads-up before making the announcement. House Speaker Mike Johnson, asked after votes this afternoon if Buck had informed him of his plans, told reporters, “I did not know.”

The sudden resignation now shaves another seat off the already slim Republican majority: After Buck officially steps down, the House will be 218 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with four vacancies. That means that with full attendance, Republicans will only be able to lose two votes on key legislation.

To make things worse, in the event a special election is held this year, Rep. Lauren Boebert (who abandoned her own district to run among Buck’s more GOP-friendly electorate) will have to make a big decision. If she runs in a special election and wins—which itself isn’t a sure bet—she will have to resign her current seat and create another Republican vacancy. If Boebert stays in her original district, she very well could lose in November. This of course also depends on whether she is the nominee, who would immediately have an upper hand in the general election.

Can I bum a sig?

Today is the first day that members of the House can add their signatures to the discharge petition that would push through the foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The magic number that would trigger a vote on the supplemental is 218, and it’s not yet clear whether there will be nearly enough lawmakers willing to lend their name to the effort to run around Republican leadership. 

The Israel component has a lot of Democratic lawmakers uneasy about supporting it, and the Ukraine aid is a hard sell for most Republicans, whether their main fear is crossing Donald Trump or lending a hand to Democrats—both grave sins in the modern GOP. 

At this point there are also various competing proposals to achieve the same goals, and much as Netflix’s grim scroll of options sometimes prevents a person from committing to any one film, these alternative bills could induce lawmakers to hold off on signing the petition. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and a bipartisan group of colleagues are working on the discharge process for their own foreign aid/border security package, even though their proposals are relatively similar to the ones included in the Senate compromise bill that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson preempted. The Fitzpatrick plan also faces the same political challenges that the standalone supplemental does because it includes aid for both Israel and Ukraine.

As I’ve said before, discharge petitions are rarely successful, but they do sometimes work well as a pressure mechanism for the chamber’s stubborn leadership. It’s still not looking good for advocates of Ukraine aid or those hoping to collaborate with their colleagues across the aisle on a border security and immigration reform bill. Then again, does it ever?

1. These politically engaged influencers have become a common sight in Washington when TikTok is feeling political pressure. They’re not the star users you really want to see, such as Floki the screaming pug.