The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr detailed Wednesday on Fox News the “layers of constraint” within Congress’ recent TikTok legislation.
Carr appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss Congress’ recent passing of legislation that would force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell the popular social media app TikTok in order to allow the platform to continue operating. Fox host Laura Ingraham questioned the FCC commissioner about his response to backlash claiming that the bill would apply to all social media platforms, to which he pushed back by calling it a “smart” piece of legislation. (RELATED: House Passes Bill That Forces Chinese Parent Company To Sell TikTok)
“There’s a lot of concern, particularly on the right, whenever Congress does something these days that can be weaponized against them because we have been living that for so long. My job as a Republican on the FCC is to sound the alarm on anything that can be used for weaponization. Not only does this bill not give that authority to the president, it doesn’t rely on that alone. There are five layers of constraints that have been put on here,” Carr stated.
“One it can not be used against any individual. Two, it only applies to entities that are controlled by a foreign adversary government — which is just China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Three, it’s not enough that you’re controlled by a foreign adversary, maybe it should be, you also have to separately have a finding of national security. Then there’s an additional process beyond that and the remedy, again, is not a unilateral ban, it is a divestment. So this is a very targeted bill, smart legislation.”
Ingraham continued to highlight some concerns Republicans had by reflecting on former President Donald Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter in 2021, a move that released documents showed was collusion with the federal government during the decision. Carr stated that while there is still ongoing work regarding Big Tech, he mentioned that there is little to do until China’s access to the app’s data is eliminated.
“Look, there’s a lot of work we have to do still with Big Tech. We need to reform Section 230, as President Trump has called for. We need to prevent the discrimination against conservatives. But you can’t do any of that with an entity that is beholden to the CCP. Look, TikTok said to us for a long time, ‘No U.S. user data goes back to China.’ Turns out, leaked material shows, everything is seen in China. They told us, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not actually spying on Americans.’ They now admitted, yes, they were spying on Americans. They then told us, three, ‘Don’t worry, you caught us, we’re going to be better this time. We’re walling off China from this data.’ That was a lie, China still had access,” Carr stated.
The legislation, which was pushed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee with a unanimous vote on March 7, would give ByteDance an estimated five months to sell the company. While President Joe Biden has stated that he would sign the bill into legislation if it made its way to his desk, some Republicans have cautioned about the legislation.
Former President Donald Trump previously vocalized his caution around the bill on March 7, stating that if TikTok were to be removed then companies owned by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, like Facebook, would “double their business” which he claimed had “cheated” during the 2020 election.