Kellyanne Conway Advocating For Tiktok On Capitol Hill

Kellyanne Conway, the former senior Trump aide, is being paid by the conservative Club for Growth to advocate for TikTok in Congress and has had at least 10 meetings with lawmakers in recent months about the app, according to three people familiar with the meetings.

Conway’s work comes as TikTok faces a groundswell of opposition in Congress. The House is poised to vote this week on a bill that would force the sale of the app by its Chinese owner or face a ban from app stores. Last week, users of the app followed a TikTok rallying cry and bombarded Congress with calls to oppose the measure. President Joe Biden said on Friday he would sign the bill if it passed.

Both Conway and Club for Growth confirmed the working relationship. A spokesperson for TikTok declined to comment.

Billionaire investor and Club for Growth donor Jeff Yass holds a 15 percent stake in TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. Club for Growth leaders have been vocal opponents of moves to ban TikTok. Former President Donald Trump praised Yass as “fantastic” when they were both at a Club for Growth retreat as the presumptive Republican nominee courts Yass to help his presidential campaign.

Shortly after the meeting, Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better.”

It appeared to be a sudden change of heart for Trump, who, as president, tried to order TikTok removed from app stores because of its connections to China.

Club for Growth President David McIntosh has been in meetings on the Hill with Conway about the issue, according to one of the people familiar with the meetings.

Conway, now a Republican pollster and corporate consultant, said in a statement to POLITICO that “alienating 170 million monthly U.S. users,” including many voters, was “draconian” and “ill-advised.” She added, “If you want to hold China accountable, why are you starting with TikTok, and not the origins of the COVID crisis, the fentanyl crisis, the persecution of Uyghurs, and the vulnerability of Taiwan.”

The push to restrict TikTok is bipartisan.

Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) — the chair and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — introduced the measure to force the divestiture of TikTok over claims its owner, ByteDance, has ties with the Chinese Communist Party. If the sale doesn’t happen within about six months, the bill calls for the app to be blocked on U.S. app stores and websites.

“America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States,” Gallagher said in a statement.

In a statement, Krishnamoorthi said, “So long as it is owned by ByteDance and thus required to collaborate with the [Chinese Communist Party], TikTok poses critical threats to our national security.”

Some Trump allies, including former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have recently become more amenable to the app. Tucker Carlson joined late last summer. Elon Musk, who recently met with Trump, on Friday publicly agreed with his recent post in defense of TikTok.

The growing affinity for TikTok among Trump’s inner circle comes after Biden’s campaign joined the app in February.

One of the people familiar with the matter said Conway has shared with lawmakers the results of polls she conducted for Club for Growth that showed almost half of independent voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate who bans the app, while a plurality of Republican users, 40 percent, said the same.

She has also told members that Montana’s experiment to ban TikTok outright has led to lawsuits and angered many Montanans, the person added.

The former 2016 Trump campaign manager is still close to the former president and speaks with him frequently, according to one of the people, who is familiar with Conway’s relationship with Trump. She has brought up TikTok to Trump since she started as a consultant for Club for Growth, the person added.

Conway has focused her messages to lawmakers on two fronts, according to two of the people familiar with the meetings. On policy, she has suggested U.S. policymakers could set guardrails on the use of American data by TikTok and ByteDance. Conway has also stressed the political downside of banning the app, telling Republicans it would be an obstacle to reaching young people, minorities and women who are major users of the app, according to the people.

"Why would the GOP wish to be seen as the party of ‘bans’ when Biden is the one banning things: gas stoves, fossil fuels, menthol cigarettes and vapes?” she said in her statement to POLITICO.

TikTok embarked on a wide-ranging influence campaign in recent years in Washington, including taking on former Obama advisers including Jim Messina as consultants.

TikTok has argued it is not a security threat: Its headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore; the app itself is not available in China; its parent company is not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party; and it has cabined off its U.S.-based data in cloud servers owned by Oracle.

“They’re trying to use these scare tactics to have a bill that gives the government unprecedented access to remove apps from people’s phones,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, has said. “This is targeting TikTok, but it could go beyond it in an unconstitutional way.”