New legislation is working its way through Congress that could result in the popular social media app TikTok being BANNED in the United States. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: New legislation is working its way through Congress that could result in popular social media app TikTok being banned in the United States. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. The best progressive talker in the business. Sorry, I keep saying it, but it’s the truth. You absolutely are. Look, this story hit me. It’s almost like you got a bunch of folks just ganging up on TikTok because they don’t want competition. I’m looking at Facebook, it’s Instagram. All of ’em are just, oh, this is terrible. These are communists. These are people that we’re letting in the United States. Well, hell, they already control 40% of all the imports that we have in the United States. I think they control $560 billion worth of imports. In land, I mean, the land that they have that they control in America is overwhelming. They have laboratories. They got medicine. They’ve got medical research facilities. If we’re worried about TikTok, in light of all that, these communists coming in. What is your take on this?
Farron Cousins: Right. This is an absolute just farce. This rationale that they’re giving us, oh, well, communist China may have access to your data. If China wanted our data, they can purchase it from Apple. They can purchase it from Amazon, legally. They don’t have to go a roundabout way saying, oh, we’re gonna sneak it through this app. What is happening, I think, like you said, is you’ve got this Silicon Valley almost like a cartel. Everybody is in business against each other, but at the end of the day, they’re all on the same side. TikTok comes in. It is an outside entity. They’re not part of the boys club. So, okay. It’s big competition for us. We’re losing money to it. We want that money. So let’s go spend our tens of millions of dollars a month lobbying these politicians to get it out of here. We don’t care that it’s unconstitutional to ban them from owning this company. We’re gonna do it. And politicians left, right, center, everybody has said, yeah, let’s do this. This is a broad bipartisan deal that even President Biden has said, get it to my desk and I’m gonna sign it.
Mike Papantonio: It’s the most absurd. It is this administration and the Republicans supporting their pals that are given them money for elections, in the election cycle. And they’re ignoring that. Farron, China owns almost 400,000 acres of agriculture land in America. Anybody talking about that? Except Ron Paul. I think he’s about the only one that talks about it. They own 60% of the active pharma industry ingredients. And then we can’t even make this stuff without what they control. They have this brain trust that’s established in the United States where they’re in our premier universities. Numbers are startling in our premier universities. They’re already in control in so many ways. But this argument that the communists are coming, it’s just, it’s a ridiculous argument. But I think it sells, doesn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It really does because we’re back to the whole red scare type thing. Oh, we have to be afraid of these communists whose global power as a communist party has greatly diminished year after year. But still, that’s how they’re selling it to the public. The public feeds on fear. Tell me what to be afraid of, and I will be afraid of it. We’ve seen it just in the years we’ve been doing this program. It’s gone from the terrorists overseas. You gotta be afraid of them. You gotta be afraid of the immigrants. You gotta be afraid of the Chinese now coming through.
Mike Papantonio: Fear sells, doesn’t it?
Farron Cousins: And that’s, it’s always the new, what am I afraid of today mentality.
Mike Papantonio: Corporate media has mastered the boogeyman. They really have. I love this. I’ve gotta read this. This is Elise Stefanik, Republican from New York. You’ve done some stories on her I think. TikTok is communist Chinese malware that’s poisoning the minds of our next generation, giving the CCP unfettered access to troves of American data. And as if this isn’t, you pointed one thing out very clearly, the data is already out there. Any foreign government could buy all the data they want. As far as the communist coming, unfettered access to America. They already have it. So you can bet if you follow the money on this, she’s gotten money from the Facebook types, the Silicon Valley types. She’s gotten money and everybody’s signing off on this has gotten money. It’s just, is it gonna pass? Really? Are they that crazy, this is actually gonna fly?
Farron Cousins: I think they will. I really do. And speaking of stealing your data and spying on you and all that, about an hour ago I was speaking to a coworker about a band, and I get on Instagram, and suddenly I got an ad for concert tickets for that band. No, no, no. Okay. China does not need TikTok if they want your data. They can purchase it legally. And I promise you, if they want it, they already have. But we know that Amazon is collecting data. We know that Google does. Apple does. Facebook does. Amazon, Roomba, we did that story how Roomba is mapping your home and Amazon that now owns it is selling that data.
Mike Papantonio: A couple weeks ago, I was talking about buying a new saxophone. Right. Saxophone ads come on. I mean, come on. I didn’t, there was no search. I was just talking about it. And this idea of, I think it’s gonna fail because I think it’s unconstitutional. Montana, they tried this already. In Montana even their Supreme Court pointed out all of the constitutional flaws with trying to do this. It’s just not gonna work. It might pass. Biden might sign it, but it’s gonna be held unconstitutional.
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely.
