Political Quotes

On the recordNovember 8, 2023
Madam President, let's just be clear about one thing. The Chinese Communist Government is not covered by the U.S. Bill of Rights. The Chinese Communist Government does not have free speech rights, and we are not talking about free speech. We are not talking about speech at all. The sanctions that I am proposing have nothing to do with speech; they have everything to do with spying, for the same reasons that we have banned Huawei in this country. If the Senator would like to have a debate about whether or not Huawei and its affiliates ought to be banned, whether it ought to be a sanctions regime for those that engage in espionage, I welcome it. That is the same debate we are having here. I just say this. If all of those teenagers and other creators from around the world who are putting all of the pro-genocidal Hamas content onto TikTok want to go do it on other platforms, be my guest. I will be right here to criticize them and call them out for their moral atrocities wherever they do it. But the reason to ban TikTok in this country is that it is a spying apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. The facts simply cannot be disputed. ByteDance is subject to the laws of China, which make American data available to, accessible to, upon request for Chinese corporations and the Chinese Government. I just lament that we cannot seem to move forward with a step that we have already taken with regard to Huawei, with sensible protection of Americans' privacy and their personal data.…
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Josh Hawley
Republican · Missouri

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