GOP Senators Prepare for Hardline Approach to Trump’s China Stance, TikTok:

The 11-hour and now 12-hour drama revolving around TikTok has drawn the ire of Republican senators, who met at D.C.’s Jefferson Hotel yesterday for Sunday brunch and a follow-up dinner hours later.

Sources present told Fox Business that the senators expressed their solidarity, noting that the national security risk posed by the Chinese-owned social media app is “as serious as possible.” There are concerns that President Donald Trump “does not understand the legislation and may not be prepared for the strong insistence he will hear from the Republican side” that the “take or ban” law must be followed.

Fox Business has learned that top GOP senators, including Tom Cotton (R-Neb.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Rick Scott (R-S.C.). Florida), attended events hosted by billionaire Frank McCourt. Son and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary. McCourt and O’Leary lead a team that has made a $20 billion bid for ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to take over the platform’s U.S. operations. Their offer is said to be the only one approved by the Department of Justice.

Sources say Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), who was appointed to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, was also present at the events.

TIKTOK begins restoring service after Trump’s executive order on day one

Nearly all of the lawmakers in attendance participated in a classified, closed-door intelligence briefing last March that detailed TikTok’s influence and reach. The briefing fueled a rare bipartisan campaign that led to a bill requiring TikTok to sell its US division to a US entity or face an outright ban.

While the content of the classified briefing has not been made public, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters as he left the March session. “My reaction to this briefing is that TikTok is a gun to Americans’ heads,” he added. “Chinese communists are using the information they are constantly surreptitiously collecting from 170 million Americans and potentially targeting that information, using it through algorithms to the core of American democracy.”

Senator Cotton warns Apple, Microsoft and Google could face ‘devastating bankruptcy’ over Tiktok ban violation

Sources close to the situation say Senator Graham and Senator Cotton were particularly vocal during Sunday’s meetings, insisting that US app hosts, including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, that distribute the service, could face “devastating liability” under the law. law.

The law states that web hosting providers must end their relationship with the platform or face daily fines of $5,000 for each user who can still access the service. This penalty could quickly reach billions of dollars.

“Tik Tok is back”: Trump teases the future of the social media app

Senator Cotton later took over X for posting all of the thanks Warning for App Store sites. “We applaud Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for following the law and ceasing operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and encourage other companies to do the same. The law, after all, risks devastating bankruptcy for any company that violates it.” Add separately“Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates the communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars in devastating liability under the law, not just from the Department of Justice, but also under the Securities Act, shareholder lawsuits, And state prosecutors think about it.”

While TikTok has regained access to the platform, none of the hosting providers have made the app available for download.

Cotton, a Harvard-trained attorney, also noted that President Trump had not been sworn in by the January 19 deadline and was therefore not in a position to extend the time before the ban goes into effect.

On X wrote“Now that the law has gone into effect, there is no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date. For TikTok to return online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that meets the law’s requirements for qualified divestiture.” By cutting all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the serious threat that communist-controlled TikTok poses to their privacy and security.

Kevin O’Leary warns TikTok’s fate could be determined by ‘secret golden sharing’ that gives Beijing ‘veto power’

Graham: “Chinese company Golden Share should be banned/delisted from US exchanges.

After the McCourt and O’Leary meetings, Senator Graham also approached X with a new plan to delist any Chinese company called the “Gold Share Structure.” The “golden share” is a term for companies where the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, make decisions and can summarily control management decisions.

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“It is clear that what is known as the ‘Chinese Golden Quota Structure’ stands in the way of saving TikTok,” Graham posted last night.

If a company has a “golden share structure,” it means one of the shareholders is Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party. He owns you and makes all the decisions.

“I will soon introduce legislation with my colleagues in the Senate that would prevent any company with a ‘Chinese Golden Share’ from being listed on any US exchange, as well as remove any existing company with a gold share structure from any US exchange.”

One source in attendance told Fox Business that the agreement among Republican attendees to follow the law and the Supreme Court ruling that upheld it was “pretty unanimous,” adding that “the owners of these social media platforms have a tremendous amount of power. (These platforms)” distort the results and polarize us. “Unnecessarily, they put people on edge and pit them against each other.”