President Biden has officially signed legislation that says TikTok either has to be sold or be shut down within the next 12 months. The legislation is going to set up a massive legal battle, and the facts aren’t on the government’s side. 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: President Biden has officially signed legislation that says TikTok either has to be sold or be shut down within the next 12 months. The legislation is gonna set up a massive legal battle, and the facts aren’t on the government side on this. You’d agree with this?
Farron Cousins: I agree that the facts are definitely not on the government side. Look, this is something, obviously, we’ve seen it coming in slow motion and we have dissected this from every angle. And I think the most important one is that the talking point about, oh, China could use this to get your data. Even the government itself says that that’s literally never happened and probably will never happen.
Mike Papantonio: And they say we have no evidence of it.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: You would think if this was going on the NSA or the FBI or the CIA might know about it. Look, this is just a product of the other tech companies saying, TikTok, we want you to go away. And there’s really good, there’s really good information that points in that direction with Facebook or whatever they’re called today, spending millions of dollars to try to make this happen, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Just in the last, or the first three months of this year, Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Instagram, all that, $7.6 million they spent on lobbying, more than they’ve ever spent in a single quarter. And even though they didn’t specifically mention TikTok, they said they were lobbying on national security concern. Basically all the same thing they’re using to trash TikTok. So, yes, I think at this point it is safe to say Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, is the driving force behind this ban.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course. He’s hired a bunch of lobbyists. He’s put millions of dollars into doing away with his competition because it would increase his business by something like 50%.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, the numbers are staggering, if he can do away with TikTok. And of course Congress buys into it because they’re getting a lot of money, a lot of money being spread around by Meta. But it’s clearly, this is a jihad by Zuckerberg. I don’t think there’s any question about it. And so you look at this and the arguments are, well, we’re doing this because we’re worried about security. We’re worried about this company finding out about your personal data. Like, really? Like it’s not out there already. Like Meta doesn’t already have it. Come on.
Farron Cousins: Right. I’ve gotten multiple emails from AT&T in the last couple weeks letting me know that, hey, we had a big data breach. Your data was accessed by outside individuals. So we have that happening with our companies here, either by selling it to people or by just not having security to protect their own platforms. So I’m not gonna sit here and be worried about TikTok doing it when I’m getting emails every other week from American companies saying, oops, we accidentally gave your data away.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Okay. So here’s the argument. Simple argument. We’re different. Instagram saying we’re different. Can you identify anything that’s different? Anything at all that’s different about them spying on folks the same way that they’re accusing TikTok of doing? Processing their data, selling the data, they’re doing everything. But we’re saying, oh no, we’re different. The only difference is that Zuckerberg has spread around more money than TikTok. That’s all that’s going on here.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. Meta has all the money in the world that they want to spend, and they’re using it. This is what lobbying is all about. If you have the most money, you’re gonna win the day. And so now we have 170 million Americans that use this platform every month. They’re gonna have nowhere to go. And they will be forced to go to Meta, Facebook, Instagram if they want to continue what they’re doing. But TikTok is the number one source for news for people under the age of 30 in this country.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. He signed the legislation. It’s gonna be months before anything happens. This will not stand this, I promise you, will not stand scrutiny by the courts. It won’t. They’re gonna say, well, if you’re gonna do this here, why not do it to Zuckerberg? Why not do it to Musk? Why not do to everybody? If you’re gonna do this, do it with equal protection. Let’s look at the equal protection clause of the Constitution. And there’s no way they just simply say, yeah, we’re gonna do this because we are worried about TikTok doing everything else that all these other companies are doing.
Farron Cousins: Ring of Fire founder and host of America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio has a new book came out this week called, “Suspicious Activity.” Like his other books before it, this book actually deals with real legal cases that Mike Papantonio has handled, but in a fictionalized way. The book follows the character of Nick Deketomis that Papantonio first introduced in his book, “Law and Disorder,” and it carries on the story that began in “Law and Disorder” through “Law and Vengeance,” “Law and Addiction,” “Inhuman Trafficking,” and now “Suspicious Activity.” This book, in particular, deals with the financial institutions that have helped launder money for terrorist organizations, which of course is a topic we have covered extensively here on Ring of Fire. So if you’re a follower of Mike Papantonio’s books, or if this is your first one, you can get your copy of “Suspicious Activity” now. Just go to MikePapantonio.com and place your order. And if you haven’t already, check out Mike’s other books, also available on MikePapantonio.com.
