Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is trying to carve out a space below Donald Trump in the Republican primary for president. Haley has clearly been told that leaning into being a parent who has kids might be her only winning personality trait, and as such, she has a policy prescription for parents: Ban social media company TikTok from being used in the United States.
She has long held this position against the Chinese-owned company, but it received a little more life recently with a (mostly) right-wing controversy that teens on the app were sharing and promoting Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America.” As for the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk’s open promotion of ancient antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories: crickets.
In a video posted by reporter Aaron Rupar, Haley spoke to Fox News about the trepidations of parents everywhere about taking away their child’s favorite social media app and offered up this gem of wisdom:
This is a truth that needs to be told to the American people no matter what age they are: I think the younger generation is smart. I think they will understand this when we explain it to them. And yes, we’re on social media, too. We put videos out there. We’re doing all those things, but we’re doing [it] on platforms that we know, that we can trust, and TikTok’s one we don’t trust.
There is one thing I know about teens: They love being told what they can and cannot do—even more so when it’s their parents telling them.
Republicans are challenging labor leaders to fights and allegedly physically assaulting one another. Donald Trump says he will abolish reproductive rights entirely and is openly calling for the extermination of his detractors, referring to them as “vermin” on Veterans Day. The Republican Party has emerged from its corruption cocoon as a full-blown fascist movement.
