by The Republican Party might have challenges reaching Generation Z, but Nikki Haley, appearing at an event on Fox News on Sunday, said the answer was not TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform.
In a conversation with “America Reports” co-host John Roberts, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, criticized President Biden for posting a TikTok clip on Super Bowl night, in an appeal to younger voters. She also criticized former President Donald J. Trump, his Republican primary rival, for not reducing his use while in the White House.
“President Trump said he would ban TikTok, and when President Xi asked him not to, that fell by the wayside,” he said, referring to Xi Jinping, China’s leader. “We should have banned it from the beginning. “It’s incredibly dangerous.”
The broadsides against both men are part of a broader argument Haley has been making in recent media appearances and on the campaign trail that it is time for new leadership. Her attacks on Trump, under whom she served as ambassador, have become sharper in particular as the two head into a primary showdown in South Carolina on Saturday.
At Sunday’s event, as she had done before, Haley broke with her party’s isolationist foreign policy wing and criticized the former president for his cozy relationship with authoritarian leaders such as Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. She maintained that Putin “knows exactly what he did” to Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken Russian opposition leader who died last week in prison, and chided Trump for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies. in Europe.
“I think that’s why it’s so damaging when Trump said he would elect Putin and actually encouraged invading NATO allies, rather than supporting our allies,” he said.
When asked by a young voter for her opinion on why she thought the Republican Party had largely ignored Generation Z and first-time voters, Haley called it “a problem” and argued that Republicans needed to do a better job of listening to a demographic with different concerns, such as the environment and debt.
But when asked her opinion on the Biden White House and Democrats using TikTok for disclosure, Haley renewed her calls for a ban, saying China had access to too much personal data.
“The United States cannot be the last country to ban TikTok,” he said.
TikTok became a point of political tension when both Democrats and Republicans accused the app of not doing enough to protect Americans’ data. They also said TikTok downplayed its relationship with ByteDance, the app’s parent company based in China, where national laws allow authorities in Beijing to secretly demand data from local companies. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., questioned TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew during a hearing this month, suggesting Chew was affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, the country’s ruling totalitarian party.
Haley has taken those concerns to the campaign trail, calling for the app to be banned entirely. At a Republican debate in September, she called TikTok “one of the most dangerous social media assets” and attacked Vivek Ramaswamy, a rival candidate who supports using the app to reach young voters. The two continued to argue about the topic in the debates, with Ramaswamy noting that Haley’s adult daughter uses the app. Ms. Haley called him “scum” in response.
During the election campaign, he has periodically called for a ban on TikTok, accusing the Chinese government of using psychological warfare against American users by promoting content on the app that Haley considered subversive. For example, in November, he argued that young Americans were more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause because of “pro-Hamas videos on TikTok.” Users had promoted the “Letter to America” – a text written by Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 terrorist attacks – on the platform in the early days of Israel’s war in Gaza.
“There are members of our younger generation who now say they understand why he did it. That’s disgusting,” he said while campaigning in Iowa. “It’s not America that does that. “That’s what China does.”
