by Frank Holmes, reporter
The social media service TikTok has faced increasing calls to be banned due to its strong ties to the Chinese government—so it has hired a longtime Biden ally to lobby the government on its behalf.
And the Biden insider has a disturbing history of comments showing her close ideological alignment with the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok has given birth to a whole realm of videos, with young people dancing, politicians singing, and Woke teachers spouting rabid leftist rhetoric…but it’s also done something else: It’s collected enormous amounts of private information about its 1 billion users around the globe.
That’s a huge problem, because a 2017 law forces social media companies to turn over any information requested by the Communist country’s intelligence agencies.
“So you have the CCP now with a tool, a weapon, that it can use to track your location, to collect data on your keystrokes, which they can compile in a dossier they could use against you to blackmail you in the future,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., last fall.
He’s asking Congress to block TikTok’s use, or at least sell the app to an American company.
In January, Texas Republican Congressman Brian Babin introduced the Terminate TikTok on Campus Act (H.R. 231), which would ban the device from college and university devices.
And President Donald Trump promised he would ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. at all if he got re-elected in 2020…or if he gets re-elected in 2024.
The Chinese company wants to make sure Americans keep downloading the app—and uploading their personal data—so they’ve hired a lobbyist…but not just any lobbyist.
SKDK’s founder, Anita Dunn, has a long history with Joe Biden, going back to the time he just got elected vice president in 2009.
As the White House director of communications during President Barack Obama’s administration, Dunn called Chinese Communist dictator Mao Zedong one of her “favorite political philosophers.”
In June 2009, Dunn told graduating seniors at St. Andrew’s Episcopal High School in Washington, D.C., that “two of my favorite political philosophers” are “Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa,” two people she admitted are “not often coupled with each other.”
Mao Zedong, China’s first Communist dictator, disarmed his political opponents with nationwide gun control measures before he killed 45 million people in four years, from 1958 to 1962, during the “Great Leap Forward.”
Mother Teresa tended the sick wounds of abandoned lepers in the gutters of Calcutta, India, before being canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
Dunn called the Catholic saint and history’s greatest mass murderer “the two people that I turn to most.”
Then-Fox News host Glenn Beck reported Dunn’s comments, and Dunn resigned from the Obama administration within less than a month.
But Joe Biden brought her out of the political cold, asking Dunn to run his political campaign in February 2020, then bringing her into the White House as a special adviser.
The Chinese Communist Party thinks she’s the perfect person to convince her old boss to keep TikTok humming along on American digital devices.
Not only does Dunn have long, personal ties to the Biden family, but SKDK members work throughout the administration to this day.
SKDK alumni include White House communications directors Kate Berner and Herbie Ziskend, and Interior Department press secretary Tyler Cherry, according to Fox Business.
The move comes as bipartisan legislation is heating up Washington—and making TikTok sweat.
Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced the bipartisan RESTRICT Act, along with Republican John Thune, R-S.D., just last week. It would let the Department of Commerce screen out a risk by any app controlled by a foreign country, including banning TikTok.
Last week, reporters asked White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre three separate times about whether Biden would take any action against the Chinese company—and the secretary ducked the question every time.
It looks like she’s outsourcing the administration’s communications to Dunn and her firm.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”