Idiot Democrats Hand Trump a Gift with TikTok Flip Flop

The mess around the wildly popular app TikTok is such a great example of the fundamental problems plaguing the Democratic Party. Namely, that they don’t really believe in anything and simply just react to the news of the day without any coherent long-term plan. The Republicans have executed a decades-long authoritarian agenda to do things like overturn Roe and kill unions through Janus, and contrasting their immense planned success to the shortsighted shitshow of the Democratic Party is instructive as to why our politics is the way that it is. Democrats spent a chunk of last year following Republicans in supporting a TikTok ban, and now that gambit has backfired as they have ensured they will own it, as the Supreme Court upheld the ban they passed into law.

The initial legislation written to ban TikTok was bipartisan, as a small group of lawmakers in the House were led by Republican Steve Scalise. Republicans initially were the ones most emphatic about banning TikTok due to it supposedly having antisemitic biases, despite all evidence to the contrary, but as Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said, the flood of phone calls to representatives pleading to stop supporting Israel’s genocide of Gaza increased lawmakers’ appetite to ban the app. In April of last year, President Biden signed legislation banning TikTok unless it was sold, as it was aptly tucked into a bill providing aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Between the Democrats’ intensely negative reaction to constituents telling them they disapproved of their pro-genocide policy and Biden’s signature on the bill, Democrats came to own the TikTok ban over the past year.

The public’s support for banning TikTok has decreased dramatically, as 50 percent of Americans supported its ban in March 2023, and it has steadily declined to 32 percent as of August 2024 per Pew. Republican voters are more supportive than Democrats of a ban, but in classic Democratic Party fashion, the “not sure” Democratic respondents outpace the “not sure” Republican ones.

Democrats got bamboozled by Republicans, and now their public position per the Senate Minority Leader is that the bill they helped craft and which a Democratic president signed into law is actually bad and now they need incoming President Trump to save them from their own incompetence.

It’s clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer for TikTok.

We will continue working to keep TikTok alive, protect content creators’ livelihoods, protect against CCP surveillance, and protect national security.

I will work with the Trump Admin to find a solution.

— Chuck Schumer (@schumer.senate.gov) January 16, 2025 at 1:06 PM

These people are beyond clueless, and now they have placed their political fate on an issue that animates young voters in the hands of Donald Trump. Democrats have already seen a collapse in support of young voters, and giving Trump an opportunity to say he saved TikTok from the clutches of Democratic misgovernance should only further that dynamic. Trump holds their political fate in his hands, as he now can decide to keep the ban and stick the Democrats with the consequences, or acquiesce to their requests to save their political bacon and take all the credit for it. Not to mention that Elon Musk is a potential buyer for TikTok, meaning that the Democrats may helped him build his disinformation empire that he is using to try to marginalize Democrats.  The Democratic Party is the party of old, out of touch gerontocrats who have demonstrated several times over that they do not understand the modern world, and their flip flop on TikTok is further proof that this party has no idea what its stated values or priorities actually are.

UPDATE: TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew thanked Trump in a video from the official TikTok account, saying “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.” Great job everyone!

@tiktokOur response to the Supreme Court decision.♬ original sound – TikTok