CNN’s Tapper Presses Gretchen Whitmer for Using TikTok Despite China’s Ties to App: The FBI Calls TikTok a ‘National Security Concern’

CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) for using TikTok in spite of national security concerns regarding the ByteDance-owned platform.

Tapper interviewed Whitmer on Sunday for State of the Union, where the conversation turned to the governor’s use of the video-sharing app. The CNN host noted that more than half of all U.S. states have banned TikTok from government devices due to concerns about its data-gathering capabilities and ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government.

“I deleted my app from my phone because so many people kept coming on my show saying ‘Delete it,'” Tapper told Whitmer. “Is it appropriate for you to be on TikTok when the FBI say it’s a national security concern?”

Whitmer defended her TikTok usage by describing it as a “communication tool,” and by insisting the app is kept on a singular device “that has nothing else on it.”

“We don’t do it because it’s fun, although some people think what I put out there can be fun on occasion,” Whitmer said. “We have it on one device that has no access to anything else because so many people get their information that way. Whether we like it or not, that is a tool for disseminating important information. And that’s how we use it.”

Ever since the discovery of a Chinese spycraft that floated across the U.S. before it was shot down, there has been a resurgence of political interest in the prevention of Chinese surveillance. The No TikTok on Government Devices Act was signed into federal law over a month ago by President Joe Biden, though new proposals have been floated for preventing TikTok from being downloaded through major app stores.

Watch above via CNN.

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