We are one step closer to a TikTok ban. That's right for the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. They might have to come up with some other New Year's resolution besides stopping the use of TikTok, because today, a looming ban on the Chinese owned application [00:00:20] was approved and upheld by a court. So the question is, will this ban stick? And ironically, how could Trump's corruption play a role in keeping the app on app stores and overturning its ban? [00:00:35] We'll talk about it all. Let's get into some of the details. I'm going to tell you what happened. A federal appeals court just greenlit a federal ban on TikTok, which means that come January, the app might disappear from stores and slowly die on your phone. We'll talk about that. That's pretty amazing. [00:00:51] But the cheat sheet on what happened is this TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which, as Trump would say, is from China. In April, Biden signed a bipartisan forced divestment legislation, essentially forcing ByteDance to sell it by a deadline. [00:01:07] And the reason they gave is the Intel community claims that China could use TikTok to surveil Americans and spread propaganda. And as we all know, that's not TikTok's job. That's X's job. That's Elon Musk's job. TikTok challenged the law and are arguing it violated American's [00:01:26] free speech rights to use TikTok. But the court sided with the Justice Department, NPR writes. In their analysis, the court said it was precisely because of TikTok's, quote, expansive reach that both Congress and the president determined that divesting it from China's control, quote, is essential to protect our national security. [00:01:45] And Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote for the court, the First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here, the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation, and to limit that adversaries ability to gather [00:02:03] data on people in the United States. I have trouble tracking how that is free speech. You can't do a platform because your data might end up in China's control. I don't know, we'll talk about that. [00:02:18] But just for all of you who are plotting how you're going to ring in 2025, I put together a nice calendar. You might want to screenshot it. If you use TikTok, you will be happy up until the 19th, at which point they will stop featuring it. It'll be the end of the world. [00:02:34] The next day will be denial followed, denial followed by anger, bargaining, depression, and then worst Instagram. And then by about the 20th or 28th or so, you might have to do some real human interaction. Sorry for that hack joke, but that's a big if. [00:02:52] The question is what can TikTok do in this scenario? What are their next moves? Well, they can either a turn to the Supreme Court, which they're probably going to do, or China might look to Trump for help. The TikTok investor, whose name is literally Jeff Yass, [00:03:10] gave $96.2 million to the GOP. And Trump did change his tune a little bit on this. Okay, Trump before that was for the TikTok ban, probably because he controls [00:03:26] Truth Social and his best buddy controls X and he wanted to ban the competition. But then Yass showed up and then he changed his new tune to say, actually, this ban as written, might favor Facebook too much, which is still a sanctioned enemy of MAGA. [00:03:42] So that and then finally, before we get into our larger discussion, here's what Trump could do to prevent the TikTok ban. He could either persuade Congress to repeal the law using the bully pulpit, he can broker some kind of new deal, which is his brand. [00:03:57] But he never follows through three. He can declare TikTok is no longer under Chinese control, or he could just refuse to enforce the ban. Those are kind of the widely discussed things he can do. But first to kind of guide this discussion. [00:04:13] The question is, do you guys think that this ban will go through and do you think it's a good idea? I feel like it's going to have this. Obviously this is just speculation because we don't know which way the Supreme Court may rule if they get to that point before you know what. [00:04:29] January 19th, I believe, is when this is supposed to kick in, which is the day, ironically, the day right before President Trump will then be President Trump again and have his opportunity to do whatever it is he's trying to do. I'm not sure if there's a day one declaration or a day one type of promise the way that politicians always talk about. [00:04:45] But there's that buffer zone I'm sure you're probably going to get to how TikTok won't be available if this goes through or not, but there'll be enough of a buffer zone for him to figure out something. Maybe one of these 3 to 4 ways that they're talking about. I think it'll be around. The hard part is how would it still be around the selling of it, the complete [00:05:04] decision to just not do anything about it, feeling like he has this kind of mandate where he can just either tell Congress or declare himself or talk to his people that are in charge of it. No, we're just not going to go that route and how they're going to explain that away. The explaining away part might be the easiest thing, because they haven't had to explain much of anything that they do [00:05:21] that they've either reneged on or that they've just simply not done or done that they declared that they wouldn't. It's going to be around. It's going to be hard for them to get rid of. Tick tock. Even though I guess the larger demographics of folks that are voters don't use it as much as, say, teenagers or 20 somethings. [00:05:39] It's one of those things where I think he learned it when he had his first go around declaring, oh my God, it's it's China, they're coming for us. And then flipped his script on it, because what he wants to ultimately be is popular. And that's going to be the bottom line I think. Right. Mark, what are your thoughts? [00:05:56] JR is so right about the fact that it's going nowhere. You got 170 million users of TikTok in this country. It's loved. It's beloved. It may exceed in how much it's loved. It may exceed Facebook and Instagram. I mean, it's really it's taken a hold in American society [00:06:12] and it's become a great marketing tool. It's become a sort of a commercial part of the business community to the point that they can advertise there. It's part of so many fabrics within American society now that it's more than just like a social media thing. [00:06:29] That just puts us in touch with cool videos. So to unwind all of that is just much too big and steep a hill for this administration to climb. Plus, this administration is populated with people who really, [00:06:44] they're the mother's milk of so much of what they do is social media, and TikTok is an asset to them as well. So for all those reasons and more, it's going nowhere. Now, the legal machinations and how it's going to sort of manifest, as J.R. Said, a little tough to predict at this point. [00:07:01] And the last thing I'll say is if a sale was forced, it would be just that it would be a forced sale. So you probably wouldn't get fair market value, if you will, for American control of TikTok. And it would open up the door to one of Trump's pals. [00:07:18] I mean, talking about one of these billionaire guys to come in and grab TikTok, this tremendous asset for all the reasons I just mentioned and more at a sale price, a forced sale price. And one of the people who has indicated an interest in doing that should [00:07:33] it become available is Jared Kushner. So watch for all of this to unfold in one way or another. But TikTok itself is going nowhere, right? That's the thing I so we kind of settled the question, right. They keep saying that the reason that they want to ban it is because China [00:07:49] is gonna get your information. Do you guys buy that at all as a reason, or is it this just like I want to sell it off to an American company? I don't buy the protection of our information, because if you really cared about protecting our information, you'd prevent it from being used by all of these domestic businesses [00:08:07] that have access to our information. I mean, our location, our identity, all of it's being tracked in boilerplate terms and conditions, from Facebook to some gift you're going to buy on eBay. So I don't buy it. No. Yeah, there's it's one of those things. It's, I mean, domestically, Mark, you're talking about how it's [00:08:25] already been sold in our identities and our locations and everything. I have no expertise in this, but I'm paranoid. I think, as you guys already know, I feel like people's information is all across the world already. So. I mean, if you're worried about that, it's already happened, in my opinion. [00:08:40] I don't know that for sure, but, if it hadn't happened now, it's going to at some point from all these other entities and ways that we can spread our information and honestly not think about it or read any of the terms behind it. Yeah. So I just put up in the chat, a poll saying, why do they want to ban TikTok, to sell it off to cronies or to protect Americans? [00:08:59] And immediately it's like 87 to 50 or 85 to 15. They want to sell it off to cronies. I just yeah, I agree, I think that the most appealing thing to them, and I think this is a microcosm for what's to come with the Doge. [00:09:15] I there's people like Ro Khanna who are going out there and saying, I earnestly, if you guys want to play ball and talk and you want to eliminate waste in government spending? Yes, I'm here for it, for a real discussion, but I don't think that's the real discussion to be had. I think the closer incarnation to what we're going to see from Doge [00:09:34] is just this is like, we got together and decided that we would like to make money off this thing instead of the people who are making money off it now. And so we're going to weaponize Congress to get them. This is a bipartisan thing, to get them to agree on something [00:09:51] which is itself like a miracle, unless you see it for what it is, which is just a bunch of people being like, yeah, I'd like to make money off of that, right? I don't know, what do you guys honestly. But the bottom line of it all is going to be Trump is going to take this whatever way it decides to stay around, whether it even be before he steps in. [00:10:11] It's going to be one of those look what I did for you. Look what I did for you type of moments. I remember the UCLA basketball players that were that were held in. Where were they? - Was it China as well. - Lonzo ball Yeah. Or. Not. - The. - Middle ball. [00:10:26] Liangelo. Right. Isn't that his name? The one who's not in the NBA. Yeah. The, when they were held overseas. And then he's like, I really look I look, look what I did for them. And he couldn't give a half a damn for them at all until he had the opportunity to make himself look good. [00:10:42] That would be the motivation behind it. Whatever way it comes, you be prepared for the high step. Well, he'll definitely take a victory lap. He loves taking those victory laps on anything. He's already taking victory laps on the stock market, claiming that it's at record levels because people were anticipating this is before the election. Okay. It was already hitting record levels then. [00:10:58] You know, people were anticipating his victory. So he'll definitely take a victory lap. I think also, and this is kind of an interesting point that you guys are raising, perhaps it will be the blessing of Trump that will be needed for the House to kind of act should it get to that point. [00:11:14] So I wonder if he won't have an oversize place at the table in determining who actually or what entity might end up buying TikTok should the for sale go through? Right. And this is not an important thing in America, which means they will talk about [00:11:30] it because it's the perfect news peg. It's something unimportant that people immediately have a lot of like water cooler opinions about. And if you're wondering what will happen to TikTok, if it does get banned, it just will be removed from all the places where you can purchase your apps [00:11:49] and it will no longer update, meaning that it will just slowly get glitchier until you finally throw your phone out the window and get a new iPhone 25. - I would say just like the same iPhones. - Yes. All right, it's going nowhere. It will not go away. [00:12:04] Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. 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