After announcing a bill to withhold federal funds from colleges that infringe on free speech, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., hearkened back to The New York Times controversy over his opinion piece this summer, where he supported federal response to mass rioting.
"It exposed The New York Times as a laughingstock," Cotton told "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC 770 AM-N.Y.
Cotton's opinion piece supported President Donald Trump using "the Insurrection Act to use federal troops to protect innocent property and lives" as a "last resort."
"The New York Times, after a day of defending it or so, finally caved to the child mob running their newsroom," Cotton told host John Catsimatidis. "And they fired their editor for running it. They said it didn't meet their standards. I agree with that, John. It didn't meet their standards, it far exceeded their very low standards. It really goes to show how intolerant the left has become.
"They don't want to have free speech," he added. "They don't want to have open and fair debate and inquiry. They want to be protected from any opinion with which they disagree."
Also, on the more recent topic of TikTok's forced technology transfer with China, Cotton warns it must stop sending data to the Chinese Communist Party or it must be banned.
"The back end of that app really is a Trojan horse for everything on your phone: Your emails, your text messages, your photographs, your social media posts, your browser history, even your keystrokes and your location data — all of that gets vacuumed up by the TikTok app and sent back to servers in China," Cotton said. "And those servers are always subject to access by the Chinese Communist Party. So, they are building massive profiles on Americans, especially young Americans, our kids, that they can use in various ways now and in the future to manipulate them or blackmail them.
"We cannot allow this Chinese-controlled app to gather so much information on Americans, especially on young kids. I hope that Microsoft will be able to complete this sale in a way that totally severs all relationships with the TikTok parent in China, ByteDance."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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