The following is a transcript of the first segment of the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here in the Pro American Report. Great chance to be together again. Thank you for tuning in. And thank you, as always, for listening to the program and also going over to ProAmericaReport.com and listening to segments there, the podcast there, and also the daily email, the WYNK, you can sign up there, get lots of feedback from people through that website.
So thank you for that. And I appreciate it very much.
Okay. Well, today we’ve got some great things to talk about. We’ve got a couple of great guests. I also actually have to tell you, I prerecorded an interview I’m going to use for Father’s Day coming up. It’s a great one about a book, and it’s not Larry Elder, Larry Elder’s book about him and his father — that’s a great book, too. I’ll talk about that next week, but it’s a great interview.
So we will talk today with Lord Conrad Black, Lord Conrad Black about exactly what he is seeing, and he’s writing about friends of his that have become such vociferous never Trumpers that he can’t believe it. And so it’ll be real interesting.
And also, we’ll catch up with Dr. Decker. Okay.
First, though, I need to tell you, we need to talk about this. TikTok is not just an app, and TikTok is not just an app. So let me explain what happened.
Joe Biden has reversed the executive orders of Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump’s executive orders were effectively trying to ban TikTok because TikTok is owned by the Communist regime in China.
Now, that was challenged in court. TikTok went into court. But basically, what the Trump administration was saying is we cannot trust the Chinese regime as they get gather data on all our American people.
It doesn’t make any sense to do that. And so they did these executive orders. They didn’t, they couldn’t get a law passed. The Congress wouldn’t pass it. So Trump did this by executive order, probably imperfect, because it probably wasn’t sweeping enough.
It probably should be a rule that any Chinese regime owned app shouldn’t be allowed.
But this one, TikTok has been sort of utilized, scooped up by literally millions and millions of Americans. Now, remember, I paused to tell you, the Chinese regime, the Communist regime and the Communists in China have for decades and decades had a plan to track every single person in China 1.2 billion people.
When you’re born, you get a file opened up. And in the old days, it was a Manila piece of paper file. Now, I suspect, although I don’t know that it’s an electronic file. But the idea is that the Communist regime wants to track every person.
You don’t have freedom, if somebody can track everything you’re doing. Well, or at least your freedom is likely to be limited by a regime that has that ability. And we have to think as a matter of sort of instinct and experience that the Communist regime in China is, likewise, opening files up on Americans.
Now we do it on Chinese nationals and others. Right? As a matter of intelligence gathering, your question is whether China, in this case, is literally able to gather data on millions and millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans. And the answer is Yes.
And more importantly, with an app, it’s different than, say, a sign up for a software program. Let’s say you signed up for some Adobe, a version of Adobe or some kind of thing, and you’re like, Oh, well, this one’s better. And it’s a Chinese app, and the Communist regime owns that.
Well, it’s not the scale of the data collection that you get from TikTok, which has millions and tens of millions of users. But the other problem with this is that TikTok can be used to steer the public’s understanding and perception because just like Facebook and Twitter and others, if you control the algorithms and can silence some things and push other things, and wouldn’t the Communist regime, as a matter of course, want to steer things in a way that’s better for them and worse for us?
Just pick in a totally sort of maybe a relatively benign way like this: the Chinese regime wants to have more videos surface that say nice things about Chinese culture. Well, that’s not exactly malignant. But what if they want to make it so that the TikTok app surfaces its algorithms, surface things about racial strife and make Americans think more and more about racial strife?
Cause that’s what you do if you watch TV. That’s what CNN is doing and Joe Biden are doing. So that’s what Trump was worried about with TikTok. That’s why he did those rules and that’s executive orders. And that’s why they immediately, the Chinese TikTok, went into court and was suing over it.
Well, the Biden administration has reversed that, and the lawsuit will now be null and void and tossed out. And they’ve said something innocuous, like, we want to get to the bottom of a set of procedures for all apps regarding data gathering.
Give me a break.
I’m not talking about data — data gathering is bad for everybody. I’m talking about the influence the Chinese regime has over America. If we allow them to keep doing this, it’s insane. And it’s not a small deal.
I know I talked about this on my live stream. I’ve talked about this issue. I’ll talk with Dr. Decker about this.
Now, the fact is this is a bigger deal. The Chinese regime is not a rival. If you don’t want to call them an enemy, you have to call them an adversary at the least, because they’re not a friend. They’re not an ally. They’re an adversary. They’re adverse to us in dramatic ways. Fentanyl, trade secrets, stealing, intellectual property theft. You pick the list, on and on and on.
And fundamentally, they’re Communist. That’s the difference maker. You know the difference maker is a Communist regime has as its goal, its stated goal, is domination of the world.
And we are the lone superpower counterweight to the rising Chinese power. So they’re clearly coming for us.
It’s not even close. It’s just not even close. It’s not even a close call. It’s not something that’s not obvious to everyone else.
So once again, the Biden administration is changing the American posture towards China to the detriment of America. There’s no doubting that.
I mean, I don’t know anybody that would argue. I mean, I guess if you’re a Biden defender, what you say, well, we’re gonna put in new rules. We’re gonna do a new rule. Will then do a new rule before you rescind this one.
Do a new rule overlapping this one so that TikTok doesn’t get to get out of court, that they stay in court and change the pleading so that they have to fight over the new rule. If you think there’s a way you can do a new rule that’s, I don’t know, either broader or more effective, I don’t know.
But as much as I care about Facebook gathering my information, at least Facebook. And maybe, I was about to say at least Facebook’s an American company. But maybe the truth is, Facebook shares my data with the Chinese, and they might.
Well, how do I know? Right? So I don’t know.
But again, the data part to me is big. But the persuasion, the part where China can use the TikTok to influence, TikTok influence us by what they let us see and what they let us know. And it’s millions and millions of users.
It’s crazy. It’s crazy. It shouldn’t be allowed. We should change the rules immediately.
And the Biden administration let us down yet again, yet again, and we won’t even know. Well, I mean, as I’ve said before, Oh, I had a great conversation with a friend of mine, Ron Maxwell. And Ron said this, I was saying, the Narrative Machine, Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government.
So in this case, Big Tech. TikTok’s part of Big Tech, owned by the Chinese regime. And Ron’s point was also Big Academia. Big Academia undergirds it all, it’s pretty good.
So the Narrative Machine, if TikTok can be in the narrative in the direction of the Narrative Machine, anti-Trump, anti-Republican, anti-conservative, anti-We the People, anti-Constitution.
They’ll find allies in the Big Media. Not all of them, but many of them. Most of them. They’ll find allies in Big Academia.
So it’s a problem. It’s a big problem. It’s a mistake that the Biden administration made. I’m disappointed that they did it. I’m not at all surprised that they did it. But here we are. That’s where we are in this one.
So bad news on TikTok. It’s not a small thing. It’s not just a funny app where people dance and act like idiots, which there’s a lot of them. Vine was like that, other things. And it’s also a symbol. It’s an indication of what our government and what We the People see.
And last point on this is most people won’t care. In fact, many, many people that use TikTok will say, Oh, good. Thank goodness Trump was the old fashioned, he’s silly, Biden’s coming into the new age. We should do it.
It’s because they don’t know. We expect our leaders to be better than this. We expect our leaders to see down the field of what’s going on. It’s a failure.
All right, we got to take a break, everybody. We’ll be back. And we got a lot on the show. Please visit ProAmericaReport.com Ed Martin on the Pro America Report. Be back in just a moment.
