GOP Sen. Tom Cotton Wonders if TikTok CEO Is a Secret Chinese Communist

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) engaged in a bit of McCarthyism during Wednesday’s Senate hearing on online child safety when he relentlessly pressed TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on his ties to China, going so far as to wonder whether the Singapore citizen was “a member of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Wednesday’s intense hearing, which featured the heads of five Big Tech companies, was largely centered on the potential risks social media products pose to young people. At one point, amid a bipartisan barrage of criticism and cajoling from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg even stood up and apologized to families in the hearing room for the suffering they’d gone through.

While all of the social media chief executives at the hearing were put through the wringer, several GOP lawmakers grilled Chew on his company’s connection to China and how much access and influence the Chinese government has to the platform. Cotton, however, took it even further than his Republican colleagues.

Read more at The Daily Beast.