Read on Twitter
What? "Mr. Trump said that TikTok would shut down on Sept. 15 unless Microsoft or another company purchased it. He added that the U.S. Treasury Department would need to receive a lot of money in return for the deal, without explaining how that would work.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/technology/trump-tiktok-microsoft.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Both parts of this are incredibly disturbing: The casual assertion that Trump can unilaterally “shut down” a media platform, and the implication that the government would somehow extort a payment as a condition on a business acquisition.
This is a laughably thin “national security” pretext being invoked to abuse executive emergency authorities in order to expropriate a foreign company. If China was pulling this this, we’d recognize it easily for what it was.
Remember, the basis for casually threatening to shut down an expressive platform used by millions of people is the *completely speculative* threat that China might demand the company turn over user data on U.S. teenagers who make short videos and do… something… with it.
Trump’s full explanation of why Treasury should get a “cut” of a Microsoft/TikTok deal is, somehow, even more grotesque and shameless than I had anticipated. https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/03/trump-calls-tiktok-a-hot-brand-demands-a-chunk-of-its-sale-price/
He’s just openly declaring that Microsoft should pay the government for driving down TikTok’s sale price by threatening sanctions.
This is literally the Mafia’s business model. “We’ll threaten them until they’re forced to sell their business; then you give us a cut for the use of our muscle.”
"Right now they don’t have any rights, unless we give it to ’em.” It’s not just that he’s abusing national security authorities, but that it *doesn’t even occur to him* that it might be considered shameful or inappropriate to conceive of public power this way.
As with his tarriff policy, there doesn’t seem to be any consideration of whether this sets a dangerous precedent for other countries to engage in similar pretextual protectionism against us, or how whimisically compelling divestment might affect international investment.
At this point I suppose it’s just a miracle he issued his extortion threat on behalf of the Treasury rather than just demanding a wire transfer to his personal bank account.
