Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stated that her decision to vote against the bill on Wednesday was not influenced by former President Trump’s opposition to a bill that could ban TikTok.
“I haven’t talked to Donald Trump about the bill. These were my own conclusions, and I made the vote based on my own conclusions and by reading the bill myself,” Greene told CNN’s Manu Raju in a short interview after voting against the legislation on Wednesday.
House lawmakers voted 352-65 approved a bill on Wednesday that would require ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, to sell the app within 165 days or face a ban in the United States.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which still must pass the Senate, had overwhelming support from members of both parties. It was originally introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Trump, who once promised to ban TikTok as president, has recently expressed opposition to the legislation, suggesting it would empower Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. The former president was banned from Facebook following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is, without TikTok you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with the media,” Trump said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The former president also criticized Facebook and Zuckerberg in a post last week on Truth Social, Trump’s social media website.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump said. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”
Greene, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, insisted that Trump’s opposition to the bill did not dictate her vote, in the interview with Raju.
“You know, he has his opinion on the bill, and he can voice it, so it doesn’t mean that we’re all robots. We make our own decisions and mine was to vote no on this bill based on everything I just told you,” Greene said.
Greene stated earlier Wednesday on the House floor that her opposition to the legislation stemmed, at least in part, from her experience being banned from social media platforms.
“I rise today as the only member of Congress that has ever been banned by social media,” Greene said on the House floor, as the lower chamber prepared to vote on the bill.
“Twitter banned me — banned my personal account on which I was campaigning for Congress, raising money and using my free speech to inform the voters in my district they can vote for me,” she continued. “This was not by a company owned by China. This was by American-owned Twitter.”
