Greene says Trump didn’t influence vote on TikTok bill: ‘These were my own conclusions’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said former President Trump’s opposition to a bill that could ban TikTok did not influence her decision to vote against the bill Wednesday. .

“I have not spoken to Donald Trump about this bill. These are my own conclusions, and I read the bill myself and cast my vote based on my own conclusions,” Greene said Wednesday. After voting against the bill, he spoke to CNN’s Manu Raju in a short interview.

House lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bill 352-65 that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to sell the app within 165 days or face a ban in the United States.

The bill protecting Americans from regulatory applications by foreign adversaries still needs to pass the Senate, where it received overwhelming support from members of both parties. The system was originally introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the top members of the House Select Committee on the Communist Party of China.

Trump, who once vowed to ban TikTok as president, recently spoke out against the bill, suggesting it would give powers to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. The former president was banned from Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“There are a lot of good and bad things about TikTok. But what I don’t like is that Facebook can be big without TikTok. And I think Facebook, along with the media, is the enemy of the people.” President Trump said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

The former president also criticized Facebook and Zuckerberg in a post on Trump’s social media website Truth Social last week.

“If you eliminate TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump said. “Facebook cheated in the last election and I don’t want them to do better. They are the true enemy of the people!”

Greene, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, insisted in an interview with Raju that Trump’s opposition to the bill would not influence her vote.

“You know, he has his opinion on the bill and he can voice it, so it doesn’t mean we’re all robots. We make our own decisions and I was going to vote against this bill based on everything I just said,” Greene said.

Greene said on the House floor early Wednesday that her opposition to the bill stems, at least in part, from her experience of being banned from social media platforms.

“I stand up today as the only member of Congress who has been banned by social media,” Greene said on the House floor as the House prepared to vote on the bill.

“Twitter banned me from my personal account where I used to campaign for Congress, raise money, and use my free speech rights to let voters in my district know they could vote for me. I banned it,” she continued. “This is not from a Chinese-owned company. This is from American-owned Twitter.”