Rep. Bowman: TikTok Concerns Are Just Republican ‘Fear-Mongering Tactics’

Saturday on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, radical Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) sneered at concerns over the Chinese spy app and social media app TikTok as Republican “fear-mongering tactics.”

“Let me go to another subject with you,” race hustler and host Al Sharpton said. “Congress held hearings on this week on a proposal to ban the popular social media app TikTok. Critics argue the Chinese-owned platform poses a serious National Security threat. You are one of the few lawmakers from either party who has vocally opposed such a ban, and you’ve expressed concern about what you call the xenophobic anti-China rhetoric surrounding the issue. Can you explain your position a little further?”

“So Republicans cannot govern on the issues, so they often use fear-mongering tactics to display themselves as being strong lawmakers,” Bowman replied. “So whether it is fear-mongering, as it deals with the border, or the debt limit, or crime, or China, this is how they govern. And I’m disappointed that some Democratic lawmakers are responding to them and acquiescing to this rhetoric. We need to take a step back, and if we want to really analyze social media, the harms that happen on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, I can argue, are far worse than what TikTok has presented.”

He went on to declare that “We need a national data privacy piece of legislation, and that’s what we should be focused on, not scapegoating TikTok.”