On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) defended his vote against a bill forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok and stated that “people are falling all over themselves to appear hawkish against China. And that instinct is not a bad one. China is doing lots and lots of things that we would rather that they did not do. But China is also a place where we do $700 billion of trade, it’s a place where we have certain common interests that we should be working together on.”
After host Andrea Mitchell raised a report China interfering in the 2022 election, Himes stated, “I have a very specific sense for the threat. I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and it is a specific threat. It is largely a potential threat, inasmuch as we have not seen the Chinese, so far, use TikTok as a way to influence the elections. But, look, this is also a broader topic. Spend a moment or two on Twitter — or X, look at the influence that Elon Musk has. The point I’m making here is that if the Congress were serious about dealing with this threat, we would start with a federal privacy bill. But more importantly, and here’s why I voted no, more importantly, I’m pretty serious about supporting the First Amendment, I’m pretty serious about freedom of expression. And for the United States government to tell 150 million people in the United States, which, this would happen if ByteDance didn’t divest of TikTok, for the government to say to 150 million Americans, you can no longer participate in this venue of protected speech, first of all, it would run into First Amendment problems. We saw that in Montana, where they tried to do this. And secondly, we’ve spent our entire history as a country saying to dictatorial regimes, you can’t shut down newspapers, you can’t shut down the public square, and for the United States to take that step, based on a bill that had all of four days consideration in the House, I just — I was not going to be a part of that.”
Mitchell then asked Himes why he thinks the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Chair and Vice Chair, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) support the bill.
Himes responded, “I have a lot of respect for both of them, but I will tell you that one of the things that’s happening right now on Capitol Hill is that people are falling all over themselves to appear hawkish against China. And that instinct is not a bad one. China is doing lots and lots of things that we would rather that they did not do. But China is also a place where we do $700 billion of trade, it’s a place where we have certain common interests that we should be working together on. And so, just because the Congress is falling all over itself for each member to demonstrate how hawkish they are on China, that doesn’t mean that compromising the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, the Constitution that we all take an oath to support, that that’s necessarily the right thing to do.”
He concluded, “I would be much happier if TikTok were not ultimately owned by a Chinese company. I would be much happier if their algorithms were here in the United States. … I hope that there is a disposition there. But, remember, Andrea, and this is really important, Facebook, Twitter, all of these other social media platforms are completely unregulated, completely uncontrolled, because the Congress has failed its basic duty to pass privacy legislation. Until we do that, Andrea, the way the Europeans have, the way the State of California has, we’re not really in a position to be overly preachy about the dangers associated with social media. Those dangers — like I said, spend ten minutes on Twitter — X and you’ll see, we’ve got a lot of work to do around all social media platforms before we start getting high and mighty about one in particular.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
