Rand Paul Calls TikTok Ban ‘Violation of the First Amendment’ — Says Ruling Was ‘Based on Accusations, Not Proof’

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) called the Supreme Court’s decision to move forward with the TikTok ban a “violation of the First Amendment” on Friday.

On Friday, the Supreme Court released a unanimous decision to uphold a law requiring ByteDance — the Chinese company that owns TikTok — to divest from the social media platform. If ByteDance does not find a suitable buyer for the platform, new downloads of the TikTok app will be banned in America.

The deadline to divest is Sunday, Jan. 19. To prepare for the ban, some American social media users have already begun flocking to alternative apps.

U.S. officials have repeatedly raised concerns over the app’s data collection, calling it a potential national security issue that a Chinese-owned company has data on millions of American citizens.

Asked about the ruling hours later, Paul said he was “disappointed” and suggested that the national security concerns were overblown.

“I do believe that banning a social media app like TikTok is a violation of the First Amendment,” Paul said. “I haven’t had a chance to read the ruling yet, but very disappointed. One-hundred-seventy million Americans express themselves on TikTok on a daily basis, and it’s just wrong for the government to ban it. Most of the reasons the government banned it were based on accusations, not proof. They’re never been tried and found guilty of sharing information with the communist government or any of that. They’ve actually offered, through our Foreign Investment Committee that oversees foreign investments, they’ve offered to have the data here. They’ve offered to work with Oracle to house the data in the United States. They’ve offered to have an American board. In fact, it’s misreported that it’s a Chinese company to begin with. It’s owned, 60% of the company is owned by international investors.”

“But disappointing. I don’t think the battle’s over yet, though. I’m hopeful that [President-elect Donald Trump] coming in can have some ability. It sounds like [President Joe Biden] left the door open perhaps for some executive action from President Trump; and I hope that’s what will happen,” he concluded.

Watch above via C-SPAN