California GOP Leader Calls For Newsom To Quit Using TikTok

Sacramento, CA — Citing national security concerns, the California Senate Republican leader, Brian Jones, has decided to deactivate his TikTok account, along with the one used by the Senate GOP caucus.

He says national security officials in Washington, DC are sounding the alarm about the social media channel, and its China-based parent company, ByteDance. The big concern is that the company is required to make the app’s data available to the Chinese Communist Party.

Jones says, “It’s just common sense – protecting cybersecurity is a bipartisan issue…until security officials, data, and conclusive evidence show that the Chinese government is not spying on us and using our data, we will not give the Chinese Communist Party an opportunity to weaponize our accounts.”

He notes that there are also bipartisan efforts in Congress to potentially ban the TikTok app on government devices.

Taking it a step further, Jones says, “I am calling on Governor Newsom to follow national bipartisan efforts and deactivate his TikTok account in order to protect our state’s and country’s national security. California recently experienced a cyber-data breach, and we cannot have our state’s top leader potentially undermining our cybersecurity.”