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Hawley calls out Biden campaign for joining TikTok after POTUS banned app on federal devices

February 12, 2024 | | Print Article

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) slammed the Biden-Harris campaign for signing up for TikTok on Super Bowl Sunday after President Joe Biden signed into law legislation that banned the app from most federal devices in 2022.

“Hey by the way, we just joined TikTok,” the campaign announced Sunday on X.

Attached was a video of Biden looking a lot like the “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man” Special Counsel Robert Hur described in his damning report, giving snappy answers to mostly Super Bowl questions such as “Game or halftime show?”

In 15 hours after being posted to TikTok, the video racked up 5.1 million views, and the campaign account gained nearly 51,000 followers.

“Biden campaign bragging about using a Chinese spy app even though Biden signed a law banning it on all federal devices,” Sen. Hawley noted on X.

In November, Hawley joined other Republican lawmakers and called for the app, which caters to a younger demographic, to be banned entirely after sympathetic reactions to Osama bin Laden’s post-9/11 “Letter to America” went viral.

“We should ban it,” Hawley told Fox News’s Sean Hannity at the time. “It tracks everything you do on your phone. It tracks everywhere you go, every text message you send, every email you write, and it’s — all that information — all of it’s available to the Chinese Communist Party.”

“It’s an espionage tool,” he argued. “It’s a propaganda machine, and we ought to ban it.”

According to a Biden-Harris campaign adviser, the campaign is taking “safety precautions.”

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“We are taking advanced safety precautions around our devices and incorporating a sophisticated security protocol to ensure security. The campaign’s presence is independent and apart from the ongoing CFIUS [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] review,” the adviser told Fox News Digital in an email.

CFIUS is “a government agency that reviews national security implications of foreign investments in the U.S.,” Fox News explains. It has been investigating TikTok since 2019.

Additionally, the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission “have both reportedly cautioned that ByteDance may potentially share user data — including browsing history, location information, and biometric identifiers such as fingerprints, facial features, iris patterns, voice prints — with the Chinese Communist Party,” the outlet reports.

“A Biden camp source says it has firewalled devices devoted solely to the app to minimize the chance of data theft,” reported Marc Caputo on X.

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The safety measures have clearly satisfied the Biden-Harris campaign.

“The campaign will continue meeting voters where they are,” the adviser stated, “innovating to create content that will resonate with critical audiences and the core constituencies that make up the president’s diverse and broad coalition of voters.”

But, back on X, many see the move as yet another example of “rules for thee, but not for me.”

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Others laughed at the hypocrisy.

“Lmao he signs a ban on an app because he thinks it’s dangerous then joins the app because he thinks it will bring in voters,” stated an account called “democrat no more.”

“You just can’t make this stuff up.”

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Melissa Fine
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