Rep. Dan Crenshaw on TikTok bill, GOP infighting

With me right now is Congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas. Dan, welcome back. Thanks, Brian.

Good to be with you. So I didn't see how you voted. I imagine, I think I know how you voted, but on the TikTok, what did you do? I voted in favor and we voted it out of our committee on energy and commerce, you know, 50 to 0.

So that's pretty overwhelming support and pretty overwhelming support on the floor as well. Why? Well, because I think a lot of people realize what TikTok is, and I'll explain it really succinctly for listeners. And like a lot of people, I understand, use it and even even use it for their businesses.

I get it. I'm not saying there's no tradeoffs here. But the reality is, is that you wouldn't allow the Chinese Communist Party to, say, put up a radio tower in the middle of Washington, D.C., and then put out whatever propaganda they wanted to millions of listeners. You wouldn't allow that. But that's exactly what TikTok is.

And I'll tell you why. TikTok, they say, isn't owned by the Chinese. They say it's a Singapore company.

Well, here's the thing. TikTok's parent company, which does control it, is in China. It's called ByteDance. And if you're a company in China, you are subject to Chinese laws, specifically the National Intelligence Act of 2017, which says that basically if you're a company in China, you have to do whatever we tell you and you have to spy on whoever we tell you to spy on. And so that's a real problem. And now we know a few things, too. We know that ByteDance does have access to all of the data that TikTok collects. TikTok collects more data than most apps.

It collects a lot of things and it uses that to drive its algorithms and basically make you addicted to the app. People love it. I get it. But here's the thing. You can weaponize that kind of tool. And the Chinese have already been shown to weaponize it. And I don't want a situation where we're in an adversarial relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and they have the ability to manipulate the minds and opinions of tens of millions of Americans. That's a really, really bad and scary tool for one of our adversaries to have.

So it's really that simple. Also important to note, this is not a ban on TikTok. This is a ban on adversaries owning TikTok. And so somebody else can buy it and everybody can continue using TikTok. I know it looks like Grumble is among the companies that want to buy it.

I think a lot of people are going to make money on it. I want you to hear what I know a lot of times you wake up in the morning, Dan, you wonder what Elan Omar, how she would vote and you try to build your life around that. Here's what she said before the vote. Today, we had an intel briefing and none of the information that was provided to us really was persuasive. What I do think that people are finding discomfort is the fact that for the first time in our nation's history, Americans have access to real images of the horrors that are experienced by Palestinians daily.

And the onslaught that is taking place is horrific. So she says that that's why TikTok is great. And she saw no reason that the security was jeopardized. Yeah, I mean, like she must not have paid very close attention in the intel briefings. And look, she's not on the Intelligence Committee like I am. And so she's like any member who's not on the Intelligence Committee is going to get watered down briefings, to be honest with you. And the reality is, too, is that people can Congress people can come out of these these classified briefings and say whatever they want because they know that you don't know what happened in that briefing.

And so that's why you hear these these these differing opinions. But she can't refute what I just laid out. You know, so you can you could make the argument that the Chinese haven't haven't gone 100 percent and fully used TikTok yet to manipulate Americans. You could make that argument.

My argument is that they can in the future and that we have to be able to prevent that kind of thing. And I think that's what she's missing. I mean, that's one thing. It's almost like what we were waiting for. Why wouldn't China or one of our enemies come up with some type of device that potentially could manipulate us and gather data?

Like, why why did we get to this point? Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely genius. I mean, I think about what I wish we had against that. I mean, I mean, we would have banned it. Yeah, they wouldn't even.

Yeah, of course. They don't even allow TikTok in China, actually. That's another thing people have to understand is they don't allow it in China because they think it's bad for their young people. And they don't want their young people communicating. They allow a form of it.

I forget what the name is, but it's usually it's very, very much censored material. It's like educational purposes. So they don't even allow it. They think it's bad. But they but they but they also are smart enough to realize it's probably one of the greatest tools they have against us.

And that's why we have to act. So I want to bring you to the border and Brian Fitzpatrick, as a bipartisan bill, put out there. And just to give people an understanding, they're doing it. They're going around the speaker and trying to put this legislation on the floor for everybody to vote for in the House that essentially would put back in play, remain in Mexico. A lot of the Title 42 restrictions not provide additional funding, but get funding to Ukraine.

This is roughly what they put out there. What do you know about it? Will you vote for it? Well, we don't want to we don't want to jump down the discharge petition route yet, but we are running out of time. So there's a couple of bills out there to clarify for everybody. There's the bill that the Senate passed and the Democrat leadership in the House wants to discharge petition that bill. I don't like that bill at all because it didn't do anything for border security and pay for Ukraine without without any offsets at all.

The Fitzpatrick bill is another one. It's definitely an improvement. You did not like the Senate bill then? No, the Senate bill didn't because it didn't do anything for border policy changes at all.

So that's a problem. I don't think Republicans should should should get on that one. The one that you're talking about that Fitzpatrick put out there is definitely an improvement, but it needs to be improved further. And I think we have some ways to do that.

I want to be optimistic here and say that within the next week that we have some opportunities to actually get something. Pass that that pays for Ukraine, but makes Russian president to pay for Ukraine. So that's that's a big one that we would all like. The White House supports it. It's a Republican bill. It takes American taxpayers off the hook for for paying for this stuff. But we also need border policy changes.

And so we need to add some of those in there as well. We can't give up on that on that goal. You know, we all saw what happened with the Langford cinema deal. You know, people didn't like that deal.

Got it. Let's move on. Let's let's find something that we can agree on and get it done, because this is this is one moment in history where we might actually get border policy changes. First time in 30 plus years.

And I'm not ready to give up on that. Congressman Dan Crenshaw, our guest, they got to also fix at least the holes in the wall and use the six hundred fifty million that is just laying there that this president won't spend because Donald Trump put it aside. The other major catastrophe in our hemisphere is Haiti.

They have no government run by gangs. We have Americans over there. And as usual, the State Department got themselves out, but they didn't get our Americans out. And there are still Americans on the ground.

How do I know? Well, Corey Mills joins us this morning and he personally got on a chopper and got Mitch Albom and his crew out who have an orphanage and was stuck there, an orphanage in Haiti. Here's what Mitch Albom told me earlier, because it blew you away that the embassy wasn't there for you and that the U.S. has really let it get this bad. Well, I don't I'm not political that way and I don't want to besmirch the embassy other than to say, yes, in our case, they did not help us. I don't know what they could do. I mean, I've been in trouble down there. Many other times we were there when the president was assassinated in the country, shut down the embassy, wasn't helping us then either.

I've just assumed that there's very little that they can do. I will say that, you know, we were in touch with them and they said, just stay there. We'll keep you updated if there's anything to stay there.

You know, we're having discussions, just stay there. And then they flew out. You know, we read and we read the next morning that they evacuated in the middle of the night. But I don't know what they were supposed to do. How about making sure that there's some resources for them? So Corey Mills takes money out of his pocket and they get an organization together that he was working with before he went into Congress.

And he's in and out again. Yeah, I mean, so we do have standards in place for how to evacuate Americans and how to use our military to do that when necessary. And look, it's different for every situation, but it is disappointing to see the embassy. Every embassy around the world should have an exact count of how many Americans are in that country. That's one of the main jobs of the embassy.

And they're supposed to be able to take roll count, basically, of who is where. The fact that they didn't do that is a very, very poor reflection on that ambassador and the State Department, especially when you're in a situation like you're seeing in Haiti, where you have gang warfare and a potentially completely failed state quite close to us. And I'm glad you're bringing it up because this is not in the news enough.

You know, some of the conflicts that are happening right in our backyard and it needs to be talked about more. I don't think you blame the Biden administration for everything that's wrong in Haiti for decades. But they did get so bad and I'm watching a press conference and they go, here's two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars for who? Are we going to give it to what gang member are we going to write the check to? I mean, what are we giving the money to? I mean, one minute we can't give one dollar to Ukraine without both houses of Congress signing off on it. And then he could write a two hundred million dollar check because Haiti's a mess. But what's the policy?

We asked Kenya to bail us out. Now, the reason why people should care about this, especially if you care about your own hemisphere, but Haitians end up evacuating, going in boats and coming here. And if you think we've got a problem now, it's going to get a lot worse. You just asked Ron DeSantis what's coming his direction. Right now, and I don't think they've done enough. And I actually asked this question very recently to the administration. You know, what are we are we planning on a on a potential occupation or peacekeeping force? Because we don't want to lead it. The reason we're bringing Kenya in to lead that lead this is because you don't you don't want American boots on the ground leading this effort.

You want it to be a Caribbean and Kenyan led effort. And that's that's been the conversation that's been had. But I don't see to your point, I do not see the administration prioritizing this. And there are massive consequences that could happen with the with the with the potential failed state. Like you said, massive immigration consequences for the United States.

So it's definitely something that we need to pay a lot more attention to. Congressman, are you getting worried about your Republican Party? Ken Buck just resigned. He's leaving next week.

Now you've got a two seat advantage. I've never said, you know, Kevin McCarthy obviously left. Mike Gallagher is going to be leaving. What's going on with the majority party? Well, you might argue we really don't have a majority, considering how we how we act against each other and prefer infighting over over beating Democrats.

That's a constant frustration of mine. I don't want to see good people leave. It's it it makes our job more difficult. That being said, you know, in the end, even with a slim majority, the fact is we don't have the Senate. We don't have the White House. So no matter what we want to pass, you've got to make a deal at some point anyway. And I think a lot of Republicans need to understand that. I think a lot of our voters are lied to in campaign season and told that and made. We make promises that are just impossible to keep. And then, you know, the narrative in our own media and on the right wing and everything is that all Republicans just didn't fight hard enough, didn't try hard enough. You know, that's not always true. There's there's the reality of the political situation we live in.

And there's the reality of the majority that we have in only one chamber. And you've got to be shrewd and and and make the right kind of deal. Like, you know, perfect example would be the supplemental Biden administration wants something. Well, we want something. We need to we need to make a deal on that.

Yeah. OK, I think we still can. I think I mean, you don't hear this from me, but I'm wondering how many people get elected if they say I'm going to go in and I'm going to have to compromise to get something done. I'm wondering how many conservative Republicans would be elected.

I don't know how many Democrats would be elected. I don't. And it's because our base has been conditioned not to hear that, you know. So, yeah, you can't you're right. You can't say that in the primary. You can't be honest with people. I'm honest with people and I get in trouble for it. So I'm on the radio right now being totally honest with it. But if you say that in a primary, like, oh, well, that person is not going to fight for us.

I know. Well, do you. And I always ask people, are they are they fighting for you or are they fighting for your attention? There's a big difference. I hear you fighting for your fundraising dollars and your clicks, or are they fighting to actually get some conservative policy measures over the line?

Because that actually takes some work. Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who fights for the country in uniform and fights in Congress. Dan, great to hear from you. Thank you. It was good to be with you, Brian. Thanks for having me.