Sen. Lindsey Graham was unable to explain why controversial federal powers were slipped into the RESTRICT Act, a bill co-sponsored by the Republican lawmaker that was sold to the public as a TikTok ban.
Jesse Watters interviewed Graham on Wednesday night’s episode of “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News, and the media personality interviewed Graham after raising civil liberty concerns regarding the RESTRICT Act’s potential for locking up political opponents based on wrongthink.
“We don’t like TikTok. We don’t want TikTok because the Chinese used it to spy on us and rewire our brains. But we don’t want the government spying on us either. Did the United States Senate just say ‘we’re going to protect you from China by spying on you’?” Waters said before asking Graham if he read the bill. “You gotta be kidding me Senator. Did you read this?”
Graham abruptly changed his tune with Watters: “I don’t think I support the Restrict Act,” said the South Carolina politician.
“You don’t support this? Because you are named as one of the supporters. Cause this is garbage,” Watters said.
YIKES — Jesse Watters asks Sen. Lindsey Graham why he is co-sponsoring the “RESTRICT Act”, he says he doesn’t support it and then Watters torches him:
“Maybe it’s like Fetterman where your Chief of Staff does all your work for you” 🔥
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 29, 2023
Graham then appeared to mix up the RESTRICT Act with a separate bill, despite co-sponsoring the controversial proposed law.
Watters continued, “We’ve got a bunch of Republicans supporting it. Because this thing is Crazy Town. You don’t want the government looking into your private phone. If they have a hunch you’re colluding with the Russians–you remember how that turned out!”
“No, I don’t, and they can’t. The Constitution trumps a statute, so let me come back and, you know, give you a better explanation,” Graham said.
“Here’s the problem as I see it–China is the parent company of TikTok and my nieces like TikTok. I don’t mind them using TikTok, I just don’t want the Chinese government to seize all their data and manipulate the information America sees for political purposes,” he added.
Graham, co-sponsor of the bill that some conservatives have compared to the 2001 Patriot Act, explained that he wants to tackle the TikTok question within a “constitutional framework.”
A seemingly skeptical Watters then said: “Cause on Congress.gov you’re listed as one of the co-sponsors of this thing.”
“Maybe it’s like Fetterman where your Chief of Staff does all your work for you,” he added. “But Senator, you’ve got to go back and talk to these other Senators about this. This thing is nuts and it’s going to get abused like it always dones,” Watters said.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this week said that the RESTRICT Act gives the federal government unprecedented power to surveil and arrest American citizens, Valiant News reported.
“This bill would give enormous and terrifying new powers to the federal government to punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate with one another,” Carlson said.
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