The late, great Rush Limbaugh used to say, “Follow the money.” That’s what Media Research Center (MRC) did, and it turns out that employees from Chinese-owned TikTok donate overwhelmingly to leftists and Democrats. This comes as TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before Congress on Thursday.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) owns a financial stake and board seat. MRC Business reported on March 23:
Open Secrets records reveal a total of 122 donations [from TikTok employees] to political entities exceeding $66,000. Over 94 percent of those donations went to left-wing candidates and groups, totaling $62,088.00 in 114 transactions from July 27, 2020 to Aug. 8, 2022. A mere total of $4,250 in donations went to Republican politicians in eight transactions by comparison, but those 8 donations all came from the same three individuals. The maximum-allowed Federal Election Commission individual contribution limits for the 2020 and 2022 electoral cycles were $2,800 and $2,900 respectively.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) were recipients of the biggest donations from TikTok employees, MRC Business said. Joe Biden also received over $2,000 in 2020. Biden originally rolled back Trump-era restrictions on TikTok in 2021.
It’s not just TikTok, either, as I reported for Rogue Review in February 2022. Relatively few employees from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance donated to American politicians in the 2020 election cycle, based on Open Secrets records, but all of the top ten recipients of ByteDance employee donations were Democrats except socialist Bernie Sanders and Republican David Perdue (and Sanders ran in the Democrat presidential primary for that election cycle). Joe Biden was the top donation recipient.
While the Biden administration has reversed its previous pro-TikTok actions and banned the app on federal devices, and while some Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for a national ban of the app, other Democrats are still supporting TikTok. TikTok is the most popular app for young people in America, but it collects disturbingly detailed data on users, including faceprints, location data, file names, and user activity across multiple devices. Chinese employees at ByteDance can access TikTok data, and all Chinese companies are required to share data, including non-public data, with the CCP. TikTok trackers were just found embedded on multiple state government websites, too.
TikTok presents a real national security risk. Chinese companies like TikTok’s parent ByteDance are directly answerable to and surveilled by the CCP, and China practices “civil-military fusion,” where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the Chinese military.
And apparently, based on the above donations, TikTok employees are funding Democrats in hopes they’ll continue to support TikTok’s operation — and thus its data collection — in the U.S.
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