The Biden administration’s Chinese Communist Party-controlled social media birds appear to be coming home to roost. Despite concerns from Republicans and some Democrats about the way TikTok is used to influence its American users, the president and most of his party slow-walked processes and ambiguously dismissed questions about the administration’s plan to address concerns about the viral video app.
Instead of sharing any worries, the Biden White House doubled-down on its work with TikTok influencers in attempts to promote the president’s agenda among young people as Democrat campaign veterans explained the usefulness of the app amid a decline in traditional news consumption.
Then, TikTok’s youthful user base turned on Biden and now it seems there’s nothing he or his administration can do about it, other than “seriously fret.”
Noting that the “president’s popularity with young voters is already sliding because of Israel’s war against Hamas,” Fox News Channel’s Jacqui Heinrich reported Wednesday morning that “the administration is starting to seriously fret about trending terms on TikTok like ‘silent depression'” that are catching fire among young people also feeling the negative impacts of Bidenomics. “The campaign is working with content creators to try to amplify a more positive message about the economy,” Heinrich added of the president’s re-election team’s harried response.
Will the Biden Campaign’s effort to flood TikTok with pro-Biden content work? Well, that’s all up to the CCP censors in China who control the algorithm and determine which videos are seen by Americans. It’s irony on a silver platter.
As Townhall reported back in March:
Banning TikTok would cut off a key channel through which Democrat candidates reach voters, especially young Americans, meaning such a prohibition would not only hurt the CCP, but also Democrats — and more than a ban would hurt Republicans. And while young voters generally side with Democrats, TikTok plays a role in driving turnout and energizing young voters who don’t get the majority of their news through traditional channels.
One Democrat-backing operation told WSJ that “TikTok can be a valuable weapon, especially since Republicans have run away from it for political reasons,” adding Democrats “wouldn’t want a tool like that to be taken off the shelf.” McKinnon also quoted a Democrat consultant’s explanation that TikTok is “the dominant platform” for Gen-Z voters and it would be “politically insane” for Biden to ban the platform before 2024.
As WSJ reminded, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo recently said this quiet part out loud in a Bloomberg interview: “The politician in me thinks you’re gonna literally lose every voter under 35, forever.”
Because Biden and his party thought they could happily coexist with a social media platform controlled by a genocidal regime in order to gain an advantage over Republicans, China maintained its power to influence the decisive youth vote Biden needs to win re-election. According to a recent NBC News poll Biden trails Trump among young voters 46-42 percent after the demographic broke for Biden by more than 20 points in the 2020 election — and now the platform the president worked to protect might not be able to save him.
