“Shark Tank” co-star Kevin O’Leary announced Friday he will buy TikTok if a bill passes to force Beijing-based ByteDance to sell the app in order for it to continue operating in the United States.
The “Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” would give ByteDance about six months to sell TikTok if enacted. O’Leary asserted he wants to purchase the company and outlined the terms of a potential deal in an interview on Fox News’ “The Story With Martha MacCallum.”
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“It’s not going to get banned because I’m going to buy it,” O’Leary said. “Somebody’s going to buy it. It won’t be Meta and it won’t be Google because a regulator will stop that. A syndicate will be formed. I would like to be involved, obviously.
“What I would do is form a bipartisan committee, an advisory committee for 18 months, go to them and I’d say to them, ‘How much will you let me keep of the Chinese?’ In other words, can we offer them 20% of NUCO [National Underwriter Company] and then everything else, hire an American CEO, American board, move the servers here to the United States, rewrite the code so we can shut out the Chinese back doors, ’cause that’s what everybody wants,” he added. “But you can leave a taste for the Chinese and we’ll put a mandate in place they get to keep 20%.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday unanimously voted in favor of advancing the bill.
“This is worth billions,” O’Leary said. “It’s one of the most successful advertising platforms in social media today. All my companies use it. I’ll buy it. I can put a syndicate together of debt and equity as long as I can get the blessing of the House. Because nobody wants to fund this thing if they think it will buck politically. But if we make it all-American including the servers, I can get this deal done. I want to buy it.”
Experts have cheered the bill but TikTok has come out against it.
“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs,” the company posted on X Tuesday.
President Joe Biden on Friday said he would sign the bill if it comes to his desk. Former President Donald Trump appeared to advocate against a TikTok ban on Thursday amid concerns it would help Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
Jason Cohen on March 8, 2024
