Former Arizona Fox News anchor turned MAGA politician Kari Lake hasn’t taken over the federally funded news organization Voice of America (VOA) yet, but she’s already voicing her disapproval of one of the most common ways Americans get their news — through the enormously popular social media platform TikTok.
On Sunday, Lake reposted a new article by The Free Press titled, “New Report: TikTok Brainwashed America’s Youth” — see below. The post includes a subtitle asserting that “China’s indoctrination isn’t hypothetical. It’s real.”
That politics makes strange bedfellows is a truism, of course, and it appears that on the surface of the TikTok issue, Lake — a MAGA loyalist and President-elect Donald Trump‘s nominee to run the VOA — is more aligned with Attorney General Merrick Garland and the DOJ than with Trump, who has asked SCOTUS to delay the TikTok ban decision — despite what Lake and others see as a national security risk.
A new report by @ncri_io – shared exclusively with @thefp – tracks how #TikTok minimizes negative stories on #China and #CCP. An example of Beijing’s development of “persuasive technologies.” https://t.co/LK6aonVozq
— Jay Solomon (@FPJaySolomon) January 6, 2025
On Friday, January 10, ByteDance — the Chinese company that owns TikTok — is scheduled to ask the U.S. Supreme Court (in TikTok v. Garland) to overturn a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that will ban the app in the U.S. beginning January 19 — if the company does not sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company.
(The ban considers TikTok’s wide adoption to be a potential national security issue. The 118th Congress put the framework for banning it in an August supplemental through the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.)
President-elect Donald Trump has asked SCOTUS to suspend the TikTok ban until after he takes office on January 20, just one day after the deadline. Trump has not revealed what action he plans to take concerning the app once in office, if the Court heeds his request.
Trump’s opinion on a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. has wavered over the years. During his first administration he supported a ban, issuing an executive order directing ByteDance to divest. Last month, Trump said: “I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart” for the app, a statement referencing his belief that the platform helped him convert young voters during his 2024 campaign.
[NOTE: Trump’s detractors, lamenting his social media success, tend to agree with Lake’s assertion that “TikTok Brainwashed America’s Youth.” Trump won the demographic of male voters age 18-29.]
The Justice Department on Friday urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s request to delay the implementation of the ban.
Agreeing with Lake, Attorney General Garland supports claims that TikTok is a threat to the American people, asserting that the Act to ban it “does not trigger heightened First Amendment scrutiny” and is “narrowly tailored to further compelling national-security interests.”
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