Welcome to the Hot Dish Comfort Food for middle America. I'm Heidi
Heitkamp. And I'm Joel Heitkamp. Heidi, we have a lot going on
in this episode, and I'm gonna start by asking you a question.
What do you know about TikTok? I
know only when people send me videos that I can't watch because
I've never downloaded the platform because I've always believed that
it would create security problems for me. But I also
know that, you know, when they were run ads to kind of protect TikTok, they
have a nun. And I thought that was genius. And a lot of people use
it. Well, there's no question about that. You know, the world
I live in, the horse is out of the barn, right? I mean, it's done,
it's over, it's out there. If they were going to get information, they're locked
in, they got information. And anyone who thinks the Chinese government
doesn't collect all this data is just not paying
attention. But we're going to have more on this episode on
TikTok later. But want to cover something because you've been on the radio
a lot, a lot of people in full on panic,
if not confusion, but if not full on panic
over the OMB memo regarding the freeze
on federal expenditures. It's like the chaos
is back. And what I find interesting, Joel, about this
is he finally had to back up, which Donald Trump doesn't
do very often. He backed up, withdrew the memo, and then
blamed the media because they spread misinformation. He
has any opportunity to clarify what he meant in that memo.
He didn't know what he meant. And all of a sudden they got caught. I
had Senator Cramer on with me and I asked him, I flat out
asked him, is what Donald Trump doing
legal? And he kind of danced around it a little bit.
And I pushed back. I said, I can understand executive orders
that Joe Biden had. In reversing executive orders, Donald Trump
is the chief executive. But to reverse what
Congress passed and is in the law
budget items, I mean, is that legal? And finally got
the, the senator to come out and say, no, it's not legal. And then
I said, what are you going to do about it? It was simple, right?
What are you going to do about it? And he said, well, it's making its
way through the courts. And I said, he didn't attack the courts, he
didn't attack the judiciary. He, he attacked you, the halls
of Congress. Are you going to retain your power or not?
And basically what he told me, it isn't basic. This is what he told
me. He said, well, we know now that we have the ability to
sue the executive branch. I said, well, you're going to sue him?
Are you bringing a lawsuit? The truth of the matter is, Heidi, they're afraid of
him, and he can do whatever he wants. He had to back
up because there was a lot of people on SNAP and on fuel
assistance and a lot of people that needed help. And he couldn't even
answer the question at, through the press conference about
Medicaid. So he wasn't ready. He
wasn't ready, Heidi. Well, and I think this is one of those, oh,
it sounds really good. Let's just put a complete pause. And then all
of a sudden, people who are waiting for FEMA assistance
aren't getting it. All of a sudden, you know, farmers aren't getting their
disaster payments. And, you know, I thought it was interesting because
people who support Donald Trump had basically said,
oh, don't got nothing to see here. Well, there was something to see
here, and this was real. And I told a group that
I'm part of who has secured a number of
federal grants. I said, don't count on them. Don't count on this money
coming, because, you know, they're gonna go back and re
trench and figure out where they can push the button. And the
one thing that didn't get changed is all of the foreign assistance, the money
that goes to NGOs and to organizations like,
like the World Food Program, like usaid, to
basically provide hunger assistance throughout the world, that money
is gone. I mean, they have frozen that out of the State Department. And
so I think it's really important for people to say, is this what I
voted for? And in the meantime, eggs are at a record high
and gas is going up and, you know, inflation,
guess what? Your insurance bill's not going down. You know, so
if this was about the economy, let's focus on the economy. But none of
this is helping the economy. And, you know, I'm a fiscal
conservative, probably a hawkish about a lot of this. But the bottom line
is right now, federal expenditures are about 25% of
the overall economy. And when you. And that's because
these investments in infrastructure, you know, roads, highways, when
you cut that out, it's going to have a negative effect
on a lot of people in this country. I'm not saying we shouldn't have
a very harsh discussion about what we can afford anymore in
this country. But guess what? When the airport authority doesn't
worry about whether their construction is going to halt. But we don't have food to
feed hungry children. There's a prioritization
here that needs to be talked about. When you look at what
Donald Trump did here one day I got. You
don't understand it, Joel. So then I went through the website and said, okay,
tell me, is this banned? Is that banned? Is that froze? Is this
froze? The next day, when he completely reversed
himself, somebody called into my show and said, you owe the people that
listened to you an apology. See, and I
did exactly what you're doing. I just broke out laughing and I
said, you still can't tell me what was
frozen. And in fact, I still think he's still doing some of
that and people aren't tracking it. And so the issue I brought up, a lot
of people listen to us here on the Hot Dish on One country,
the one thing. And I'm going to give you just a couple examples. Number one,
we were dry last year. We got dry. If you got in the
field early here in the upper Midwest, you had a pretty decent
crop. But after that, the rains quit, okay? Some of those
guys still got 200 bushel corn on the Northern Plains. The reason
they got 200 bushel corn is because of the research that is done by
NDSU and sdsu. Those people don't
know if they're going to get any research dollars. Then I raised the question
on my show of crop insurance because we don't have a new farm bill, you
know, and if he's going to just take it upon himself to dictate and
mandate whatever he wants, and Project
2025 says get rid of it, which is his
blueprint. That's his game plan. I mean, ask the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas
City Chiefs. They have a game plan, right? Well, his game plan is
Project 2025. It gets rid of
federal crop insurance. And so I
think some of these people are finally waking up about how much
he's putting them in danger. I'm a little nerdy on this because
when I was in college, actually a junior in college, I did a
whole paper on the Budget Empowerment Act. I mean, that
sounds really boring, but I thought it was fascinating. And what
caused the passage of the Budget Empowerment act is Richard Nixon did
the same thing. Richard Nixon basically said, I'm not going to
spend the money that Congress has appropriated. And Congress back
then, when it actually worked and responded using their Article
1 authority, passed the Budget Empowerment Act. That's why the fiscal
year starts in September. That was the first move. And they basically
said that the President you know, at the time they were talking about the imperial
presidency, the President does not have the authority to
not, they implement the laws. They don't determine,
you know, what the laws are. And so now when you go back and
you look at that Budget Empowerment act, we're in the same spot that we were
before. And should we curtail spending, should we
get rid of waste, should we do all the things that need to be done
in terms of prioritization of the federal budget.
Absolutely. But it needs to be done in conjunction with the
Congress and it needs to be done in full transparency with the American
public so they can decide is this the direction we want the
government to go. And if you thought that we aren't
headed for autocracy, you should really think that because
the power of the purse is the power of government. And what
Donald Trump said is, I don't care what Congress does, I am going
to make these decisions for the rest of the country. And
I think your discussion with Senator Cramer. Absolutely. Right
on. They should have that discussion with everyone.
So the power that Donald Trump holds over Republicans in
Congress is primary. I mean that's his
power, that he's gonna primary them, that he's gonna find a
MAGA candidate. He does it anyway. If he doesn't like you, whether or not you
toe his line or not. But that's his power.
If you're those individuals and you're that worried about reelection
and he's cutting heating assistance and he's cutting SNAP
and you've gotta go back to these districts and he's cutting
crop insurance and you've got to go back to those states, those districts,
and run based upon what you've just
allowed to happen. It doesn't matter if you're
primaried, you're going to lose. I mean
that image in that campaign of that 80 year old lady who
no longer has heating fuel in her house or no longer
has food. Because you and I both know that people that use
SNAP, that the majority of them are elderly or they're working.
Yeah. Or working. They're working poor. Yeah. And so, you know, here
you sit. And if I'm a congressman, I don't want to go home
and run in a district that he beat up like that just by a stroke
of a pen. I don't hide. Yeah. Well, you know,
there's a reason why he backed up and apparently pretty thin
skinned over at the White House because a lot of members were calling saying
you got to fix this. And, and he didn't like being told what to do
by Congress. And so I think that every
day, Joel, I kind of didn't think this would happen, and I guess I'm
naive. Every day there is something else.
And now we have this tragic, tragic
accident. And the first response is to blame someone
as opposed to try and figure out how it was that a military
helicopter was within the flight plan of an American
jet. I mean, that was a military helicopter.
So, you know, what's it doing there? And, you know, we'll find
out more and more, but the reaction always is, how do I
blame someone else as opposed to how do I fix the problem?
So, Joel, let's change the subject. Let's talk about national security and
social media and let's talk about TikTok. You know, listeners,
you probably heard about TikTok, but you might not know,
you know, what it is. It's a social media app for sharing short
videos that a lot of folks love, especially younger people. A lot
of people have businesses that depend on TikTok,
and folks use it to educate and share information, important
information. For example, you've got people like Tyler Froberg,
a fourth generation farmer who's teaching veterans how to
farm diversified fruits and vegetables in Texas. His
TikTok channel has
850,000 followers.
Morgan Gold, who left corporate America to become a farmer. He
uses TikTok to help people understand the finances of
owning and running a farm. He has over 2
million followers. Alexis Nikole
Nelson, whose educational video is about foraging and
cooking wild plants, have brought her 4.5
million followers. These people are doing good work with
TikTok, but we all know, right, it has some
problems. I mean, you know, we have to rely
somewhat on the folks in Congress who have access
to a lot more intel about the potential damage that
TikTok would do. But you also have to wonder, Joel, is
the cat out of the bag? Are we just a little late to this show?
So I think having this discussion right
now is critical. And so no one wants the
Chinese government to have access to all the data about every single TikTok
user anywhere in the world. And that should and does make
a lot of people, especially cybersecurity specialists,
very nervous. Last year, Congress passed a law banning TikTok
unless it was purchased by American company. Donald Trump actually
proposed this when he was president and originally agreed with it,
but now he's changed his mind. Probably has something to do with the campaign contribution
or with the fact that he got a lot of followers on TikTok, so now
it's his platform. So I'm really excited to have this
conversation to help us understand all of this. I'm here with David
Dorfman, deputy staff director and chief counsel of the
House Select Committee on China, but also an old friend. We
worked together on some reg reform stuff when I was in the Senate.
David led the drafting, strategy, and bipartisan
negotiations for the Protecting America from
Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That's a
big wordful. But mainly it was the TikTok divestiture
law. Welcome to the Hot Dish, David. Thanks so much for having me. Senator,
it's an honor to be here. You know, I'm a huge fan of your show
and actually a rural American myself back in the day, so it's great
to be here. Well, listen, I think there's a lot of confusion, because
every time someone says, it's a TikTok ban statute, I have
fingernails kind of on the chalkboard. Because it doesn't ban
TikTok. Tell us what the law actually does. Senator, you hit the
nail on the head. This is not a ban. TikTok has been
lying, deceiving its users, telling them it's something it's
not. All this law requires in order for TikTok to
remain available in the United States is for ByteDance to sell
the application to an American company, a Canadian
company, a company that's not based in China, Russia, North Korea, or
Iran. So explain ByteDance. Well,
ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok, and unfortunately, it's
controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. That is what Congress
determined. And the problem with having a
Chinese company control an app that 170 million
Americans use is not that hard to understand, actually.
I mean, a lot of TikTok users joke that the TikTok
algorithm knows them better than they know themselves. It knows exactly what they
want to see, and people hand over a lot of data about their
usage, their identity, et cetera. Think about what China
could do with that. It's, it's not hard to figure out. Yeah, and there
is. There is an argument that the algorithm kind of
analysis that people like so much on TikTok is actually owned by
ByteDance. And so they don't want to give up that technology to
an American company. So they're kind of playing fast and loose with,
oh, you're banning TikTok. You're not banning TikTok. You're saying it can only be
owned by an American company. And I want to make this point, which
is the Chinese would never let this happen in
China. Absolutely. You know, and frankly, our Founding
Fathers would have never allowed this to happen. In America. Can you
imagine if after independence, you know, or brand new United
States and there were British soldiers deciding who got to go into
Boston Common and you had to hand over all your data in order to speak
your mind in the town square of that day? I mean, they would have laughed
that arrangement out of the room. Would we have allowed the Soviets to own
major broadcast networks? No. So this
is no different. This is simply the 21st century version of a long
standing principle of American jurisprudence and
regulating foreign ownership and national security. So
I'm on television quite a bit and I have
panelists who always argue with me, oh, this is terrible.
You're just. And I just say you don't know what you don't know. And having
been in the Senate and knowing that there are
briefings, intel briefings that are carried out, there's a whole
intel committee, you know, there is a lot people don't
know about what's currently happening and what the risk is and Congress
can't tell them. And that puts you definitely at a different, as a
disadvantage. You know, that's certainly true, Senator. But you know, one thing
that speaks volumes is the historic bipartisan
margins this passed by and the fact that two presidents
of separate political parties reached the same conclusion about
this. I mean, honestly think about this timeline, Senator.
Look, I led our investigation and bytedance, I got so in the weeds of this
stuff. And we had our all hands on deck briefing for our committee
on January 18 of last year. On
March 5, we introduced the bill. Two days later, on
March 7, it was marked up in the Energy and Commerce Committee after another
classified briefing unanimously. Senator, you know, the
Energy and Commerce Committee, a 500 vote
in favor of this law. Unheard of. Unheard of. And then
we went to the House floor the next week.
Over360 votes in 2024,
in our sadly partisan era, also unheard
of. We passed the House again, equally large
margin, we passed the Senate almost 80 votes. This
is truly a model for how Congress can still
get big things done even in this very partisan time.
Yeah, and I had a discussion with a renowned
constitutional scholar, literally because I'm at the University of
Chicago. And it was interesting because he kept arguing
with me that this act was in violation of
free expression and free speech. And I kept saying it's a
platform. So I think Supreme Court agreed with
me. Not that that's a badge of honor these days. So I'm going
to, I'm going to give you the practical response. Look, you waited too
long. You let it get a toehold, you Let you know how many
130 million Americans use this platform.
Get used to it. Love it. And then you said, oh, no, no, no.
Now that you've given all your information to the Chinese, we're going to take
this platform away. And isn't this a little like,
too little too late? Well, I can't say the legislative
process is perfect. Certainly it would have been better if Congress was
able to come together and do this earlier. But we've been trying and
frankly, we've been failing for years. It was our strategy and
it was the ranking member's leadership that really got this across the
finish line. Finally, in 2020, there were executive orders to try
to force a divestiture. The court struck that down. It relied on
something called IEPA. There's an exception in it that didn't allow for that
to be upheld. The next President tried to do this through the CFIUS
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States process. That got held
up too. Certain states tried to do this for different
reasons at the state level. And there were multiple bills
in Congress, the Restrict act, multiple others that
unfortunately didn't go anywhere. What set us
apart is we scoped this right, we
employed smart strategy, we drafted it in a
constitutional manner, and we got it across the finish
line. And what truly I think is
so monumental about this is that,
yes, it would have been ideal if we acted on this
threat sooner, but now, because of this law, the President
will have the authority to prevent similar threats from emerging.
A little pet issue of mine was people don't know.
ByteDance actually is one of the largest VR virtual reality
headset manufacturers in the world. And this law
even includes the authority to address that threat,
augmented or immersive technologies. So going forward, we now have
the framework to do exactly what you said, Senator, and prevent similar
threats from emerging. So I just want to pivot just for a second
into Deep Seek and into kind of this AI
race that we're in with China and just draw on your
expertise. Are we losing the fight? Are we winning the fight?
Where are we at with the Chinese as it relates to AI?
Well, I've been actually leading a lot of work for the ranking
member on this very issue. And I spent a lot of my time in
Congress actually on the cutting edge of AI regulation and promoting AI
innovation. And I think this moment should be a wake up call
for all Americans. Winning this race is not inevitable.
We need to invest in innovation, we need to
regulate responsibly, and we need to take Deep seek
seriously. We can't stagnate and we can't wait much
longer. If we don't act on this very troubling
development soon, it may be too late. Well, I think it's interesting
because it's attractive from a standpoint of if, in fact
it uses less energy, if it provides greater
transparency. I've been reading all this stuff. I am just a, I
mean, I am kind of a groupie on AI, but
I think I know enough to know how much I don't know. And so, David,
we are going to get together again and talk about kind of
where tech regulation is headed, what you see in the next four
years. I think one thing we can all learn from the TikTok law
is, you know, whatever is going on in society, Congress still
can get big things done on a bipartisan basis. You know, folks
said we couldn't do this. We got it done. And that's because
honestly, as you know all too well, there are good folks on Capitol Hill
who are fighting hard for our national security. We're going to keep fighting the good
fight and making sure that our national security is
protected. Can you come back and talk about kind of
technology, technology regulation and where it's headed and I
particularly given that both of us hail from rural places,
what that means. Absolutely, Senator, happy to come on
anytime. It's so important that Congress take action on
AI for too long, we forgot that we're Article 1
of the Constitution over here. When there's a big issue of the day, no matter
what it is, we got to step up, we got to do our jobs. And
I think the TikTok law is a perfect example of how we can in fact,
do that. Yeah. Thanks so much, David, for coming on.
That was a really interesting conversation. But we also wanted you to
hear from a user's perspective. Sayen Gates
is a small business owner in South Carolina who's used TikTok to
grow her life coaching business. She's
already experienced challenges with the on again, off
again TikTok band. But you know what? We'll let her explain.
I started using TikTok around 2020. That
was during the time that I realized what my gift was. I was out here
giving my, my pearls to my friends and I'm like, well,
probably not too many people know about the basics of
communication or the basics of like, how to approach someone
or how to manifest your dreams. I started to notice people
that were emailing me or they would text me
about like, what are some things that I can do to communicate
better? Or how much do you charge? And I was
like, okay, this, this seems like a legitimate business. I got my
llc and then after that I had been
branching out ever since. I started to see a shift
when I got to about a thousand followers to know that I was doing
something right. I expanded to other platforms,
but they didn't see as much progressive as it was on
TikTok. The banning concern for
TikTok. I understand the concern because number
one, we have to think about the influence that we have on
children as well as teenagers because they're following this type of
stuff. My niece knows the Renegade dance because of TikTok
and she follows that. And there's a lot of
positive content on TikTok.
However, it's overshadowed by all the
mess that we don't see, like, the good in it. And I
understand like the concern about it. And I can only speak for,
like myself and for a friend of mine
who has a lot of followers. That was
her ticket out of doing a 9 to 5. And it's not
like she didn't want to do a 9 to 5. It was just the fact
of she noticed that when she was on TikTok, she
made what she made at her job in
24 hours. And we're talking about like five to
$800. Now that income is being
retracted because there's national security
at State. So for me personally, I can, I can
still be on the ground running when it comes to when
Tik Tok leaves or if it's going to stay. But I know
for people like her that was hoping that this was a way out because a
lot of people don't know that like some jobs have
very toxic environments and sometimes for people that
are neurodivergent, that's not always a safe thing because those are
normal thinking. Feel like we have to process everything their way.
And sometimes it's not like that. So now you found a
space where you can actually be yourself and you don't have to worry about
too much judgment. And now it's going away and you're freaking
out because now you have to go back into the, the societal norm, if
that makes any sense. It has affected my business
because I don't get those messages anymore now that we know
that TikTok is banned. And then also my
follower count has decreased and it's like that is a drastic
gap. I was like, I worked really hard to build
my content and my platform, only for it to be decreased like
that. That didn't feel great for me. So now I'm
forced to be more aggressive in being on the ground with things
or just posting stuff on Instagram and
YouTube. And I right now my personal opinion is we're about
to see a flood of ads on YouTube
for businesses now that they can't sell their product on TikTok shop
anymore because TikTok shop is not going to exist. I
don't have TikTok on my phone anymore because I deleted it
because I knew that I wouldn't use it, but I could still access it from
my computer. But now the transition
is trying to get all my videos of old
and transfer it to another place, whether it be Instagram or.
Now the thing is, Lemon 8. Lemon 8 was
announced around the time that they were trying to figure out whether or not they
were going to actually ban it or they were going to find
another place to do it. The problem with that was that it
says on the bottom of the app it says powered by
TikTok. So I had two speculations. Either
one, it's also going to be shut off by the law because it's
attached to TikTok. Or two, we'll be fine and we'll
have an extra platform. We don't have to go to Kick or anybody else.
But that soon became a horror show because once
I tried to go on Lemon 8, it wouldn't allow me to get on there
either. So now you have to make a video. And I've seen many
creators do that and they did it on Lemon 8. They would make
videos saying, hey guys, it looks like they're finally shutting us down.
So follow me on Lemon8, follow me on Instagram, follow me on YouTube. It's
like now it's time for those other platforms to shine. Now because
of the fact that TikTok is not going to be the center of the universe
anymore. And when we found out that Lemonade
is not opposed in this situation, then everybody's
like, oh no, now we have to get all these platforms. We didn't really, we
thought was low maintenance. And I'm just, I mean I've already had
them since 2020. I'm. I'm not scrambling too much
to do it now. Shifting some things maybe, yes, but
that's. That, that has been a whole different thing. This, this
ban has been very stressful.
You know, Joel, it just goes to show how complicated some issues
really are. There are good arguments on both sides and that's why we need
competent, clear headed leaders to make sense of all of this as we
move forward in our country. You know, you said it. We just
hope you understand the TikTok Ban issue a little bit better.
Let us know what side you'd take or how you'd solve
this. Email
us at podcast@onecountryproject.org
and let us know. That's
podcast@onecountryproject.org
and thanks always for joining. Us on the Hot Dish. It's brought
to you by One Country Project, which is making sure that the voices of
the rest of us are heard in Washington. Learn
more at onecountryproject.org that's where
you can find more information about the work that we do at One Country. And
we'll be back in two weeks with more Hot Dish Comfort food for
Middle America.