WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wednesday on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) called on the Chinese Communist Party to allow ByteDance to sell TikTok to American owners. Ricketts made the comments while objecting to a unanimous consent request from U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) to extend the deadline for a potential sale.
“ByteDance was given 270 days to make a deal,” said Ricketts. “The Communist dictator Xi Jinping clearly did not want it. They tried to lobby us. They avoided getting a deal done. President Trump came into office. They are still avoiding getting a deal done.”
“The law is very clear. TikTok needs to be sold to an American owner to continue operation,” closed Ricketts. “Not some half-baked plan, as my colleague from Arkansas was describing, where the Chinese Communist Party would still have influence on the TikTok algorithm, still have the ability to push their propaganda to the American people. That cannot happen. We need to make sure that the Chinese Communist Party cannot do that in our country again. We won’t allow other TV or radio stations to have that much access. Why on earth are we doing it for the Chinese Communist Party? It is absolutely ludicrous. We need to keep the pressure on. We need to make sure that TikTok is sold.”
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