Political Quotes

“Mr. President, back in 2019, I believe April of 2019, if not the first, I must have been one of the first people to call for the company TikTok to be banned in the United States. So it has been a while now; it is not something I just came up with the other day. But I do think that is a pretty extraordinary thing, to ban a company, and so before I think we--for someone like me, who has argued for a national ban on a company like this, to take away something from over 100-and-something million Americans, many of whom I have heard from, many of whom I know personally--before we do something like that, I think people deserve an explanation as to why is it that we would want to do that. I don't think the answer can just be ``Trust us. It is bad for America.'' I think they do deserve an answer, and I think they do deserve a clear argument as to why it is in our national interest to do this and why it is the only option we have. First, I think it is important to understand how TikTok works. It is an ingenious app--no one argues about it--these short-form videos, and it always seems to show you what you want to see. The more you use it, the more it shows you the things you want to see. How does it do that? Well, it does it two ways. First of all, it scoops up an extraordinary amount of data--not just data on what you are watching, all kinds of data. CNBC actually talked about it. TikTok, you know, collects your content that you viewed, content you created, shared.…”