Congressman Garret Graves speaks out about TikTok ban, border crisis

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Congressman Garret Graves spoke with WAFB’S Tisha Powell about the TikTok ban, border crisis and other issues on Thursday, April 25.

When asked about the future of house speaker Mike Johnson, Congressman Garret Grave said, “I don’t think that there’s another person that could get enough votes to be speaker. And because we went through such chaos, I don’t think that people are going to do that again without a clear replacement speaker which I don’t think exists. So, I think Mike Johnson is going to be fine, but I do think that people are going to continue dangling that threat in front of him as a way to try to force him to do things they feel are better or do things differently.”

“A lot of people are watching the possible ban on TikTok. Do you think that will ultimately happen?” Tisha Powell asked.

“Do I think that TikTok is going to be restructured? Yes, 100%. Do I think TikTok is going to be banned? No. And this is a really important distinction because what TikTok did in response to the threat of the legislation is exactly why the American government was concerned. They actually use their ability to connect directly with people to feed them a false narrative and misinformation to direct them to begin calling the members of Congress to literally a pop up showed up on your screen in the app. And it said call these people and the only way to get rid of it was either to hit the call button or to swipe in the opposite direction, for the way that you swipe on TikTok for every other thing they intentionally use it to influence public opinion. And we are certain that TikTok is ultimately controlling, the Chinese Communist government has access to all their information.

Why in the world would we want that government to have that pipeline to influence public opinion? So, President Biden signed a strongly bipartisan bill into law that will simply require TikTok severe the relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. Is the app banned? No. Does it go away? No. It simply will be required to sever that relationship with the Chinese companies,” Graves said.

When asked about the potential of seeing a border bill, Graves responded,

“So, borders been really mishandled by both Republicans and Democrats. I think that legislatively Republicans have not handled it as well as they could, and I think that the President has made some grave errors to put in perspective. In the past three and a half years, we have had double the population of Louisiana, double our population come across the southern border illegally. I mean, these numbers are mind boggling. And so you got to kind of redefine your question...

Do I believe there is bipartisan consensus on things that can help to solve the border problem? I do. And I think that they should have been included in that last package for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and others. And I think that that was a big mistake in not including some of the bipartisan items that could have a big a big part of the could have been a big part of the solution. Do I think we’re gonna get a bill done by the end of the year? I think right now, unfortunately, it’s unlikely because I think some of the best opportunities that we have to do it have been squandered or have passed, like, as I mentioned, on the Ukraine, Taiwan Israel package. I think that was one of the better chances that we had. There still are a few vehicles this year, and I’m hopeful with bipartisan support on some of the solutions. I’m hopeful that we can do it. I’m not going to stop trying. But you know, let me say it one more time to fix some of the opportunities have been squandered unfortunately,” Graves said.

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