Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina revealed he received a death threat over legislation forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok.
The anonymous individual threatened to hurt Tillis should legislators proceed in ‘banning’ TikTok, citing loss of employment and entertainment options among her stated concerns. “Listen if you ban TikTok, I will find you and shoot you,” an unidentified woman said in a message to Tillis’s office. “That’s people’s jobs and that’s my only entertainment. And people make money off there too. Anyways, I’ll find you and shoot you and cut you into pieces. Bye,” she concluded.
Tillis said he reported the threat to law enforcement. He also accused TikTok of a “misinformation” campaign designed to trick people into believing that Congress seeks to ban TikTok. “TikTok’s misinformation campaign is pushing people to call their members of Congress, and callers like this who communicate threats against elected officials could be committing a federal crime,” Tillis posted on X (formerly Twitter). “The Communist-Chinese aligned company is proving just how dangerous their current ownership is,” he added.
In reality, the bill in question does not ban TikTok outright, nor is a ban the inevitable consequence should Joe Biden eventually sign the legislation into law. The bill gives ByteDance — TikTok’s parent company that has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party — six months to divest from the popular app or see it banned in the U.S. Several parties, including former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, have expressed interest in purchasing TikTok should ByteDance divest.