Former White House adviser Steve Bannon jumped on Donald Trump for his opposition to banning TikTok. It has been suggested that his former boss’s opposition may be motivated by billionaire donors with large stakes in the Chinese-owned app.
Bannon, who was fired as a White House adviser after critical quotes about the then-president were published in a book, posted a link on the social media site Gettr to an Axios News article with the following title: “What’s inside President Trump’s TikTok flip-flops?”
“Simple: Yas Coin,” Bannon wrote in the caption on the right-wing microblogging site.
Bannon was referring to Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, who owns 15% of TikTok owner ByteDance.
Mr. Trump, who is expected to win the nod of the Republican Party for a rematch with President Biden in November, recently received a letter from Mr. Yas, sponsored by the pro-business conservative group Club for Growth, which also opposes the ban on TikTok. I was invited to speak at a meeting.
The newspaper has reached out to President Trump for comment.
The Axios article noted that President Trump was pushing to ban TikTok due to national security concerns.
But under pressure from Congress to force ByteDance to sell its ownership of TikTok within six months, the former president reversed course.
“If we abolish TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck’s business will double. We don’t want Facebook to try harder after they rigged the last election. They are the true enemy of the people!” President Trump said. Last week, he mentioned Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook’s parent company Meta, on his platform Truth Social.
Trump’s reversal puts him at odds with top officials in his own party, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), and prominent right-wing commentators on cable TV, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham. become.
“I’m not a fan of Facebook, but TikTok is a qualitatively different deal. It’s a backdoor for the Chinese Communist Party,” Hawley recently told reporters.
The Republican-led House is poised to vote in favor of the bill on Wednesday.
The bill will then be introduced in the Senate.
Biden has indicated he intends to sign the bill once it reaches his desk.
Some Gettr users agreed with Bannon’s post by criticizing Trump.
One of them wrote: It really doesn’t make sense. Why would we allow China to help or allow us to collect more information about Americans to better understand how to destroy the United States? ”
Some people supported President Trump, saying the debate over banning TikTok was meant to be a distraction.
“It’s a red hearing [sic] when [deep state] I am using Google. [Facebook] To destroy their own people,” one Gettr user wrote.
