Joe Biden has indicated he will sign a bipartisan bill that would ban TikTok across the United States unless the company agrees to divest from its Chinese communist ownership.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One on Friday, Biden said he would sign the bill if Congress sent it to his desk.
“If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” he said.
President Biden answers numerous questions from the media, including on debating former President Trump, the State of the Union and the Middle East and…
Q: “Do you still support banning TikTok. Will you sign that bill?”
President Biden: “If they pass it, I’ll sign it.” pic.twitter.com/rLSdLvw8pM
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 8, 2024
Under the bipartisan legislation, which has already passed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, TikTok would be forced to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or face removal from the American market.
The bill comes after years of wrangling about the safety of the app, which many national security experts believe is used by China to spy and harvest data from American citizens.
In a statement on Wednesday, TikTok said that the legislation represented an “outright ban” of the popular app.
“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” the statement read. “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
Our statement on the latest TikTok legislation: This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they…
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) March 5, 2024
On Thursday, the app’s users received pop-up messages asking them to “stop a TikTok shutdown” by contacting their representatives and demanding they vote against the legislation.
“Call your representative now,” it reads. “When you’re connected say where you’re from and tell them to vote NO on the TikTok ban.”
Among the bills sponsors included Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher and Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorth, both of whom called on the company to divest from its current ownership.
“This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users,” Gallagher said earlier this week. “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.”
“We implore ByteDance to sell TikTok so that its American users can enjoy their dance videos, their bad lip-sync, everything else that goes along with TikTok,” added Krishnamoorthi. “We ask American users of TikTok to tell ByteDance to sell the platform. And this bill provides the way.”
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
