Despite advocating for a potential TikTok ban that’s currently under judicial review, politicians of all stripes turned to the platform to boost their chances in the 2024 election.
At least 49 members of Congress, five officials in President Joe Biden’s administration and President-elect Donald Trump have verified TikTok accounts, according to an analysis by NBC News. Twenty-three of the 49 members of Congress voted for the “TikTok ban.” Many of these politicians have used TikTok to campaign, defend their beliefs and curate their public image — even as they argue that the app poses a threat to American users.
The presence of American politicians on the app who actively campaigned or voted for the potential ban highlights a thorny reality: Despite their claims that TikTok poses a national security risk, the app remains a primary source of media for a significant portion of their constituents. Recognizing this, many have leveraged TikTok’s massive reach to bolster their re-election campaigns, despite criticism of similar types of political hypocrisy, from the use of dark money to advocacy around early voting and voting by mail.
Cheyenne Hunt, an attorney and a former Democratic congressional candidate in California who has worked on big tech regulation in the U.S. Senate and has over 100,000 TikTok followers, described the use of TikTok to reach people “where they are” while also advocating against big tech as an “interesting balance.” Hunt doesn’t support legislation that singles out TikTok, because she said other big tech companies like Meta pose similar concerns. She said politicians are drawn to TikTok in part because of its unique algorithm, which can show their content to millions of people without requiring paid promotion or an established following.
“Increasingly, it’s becoming the main source of news for most Americans,” Hunt said. “It’s really the place where people are. It’s where they’re engaged.”
TikTok use in the Biden administration and incoming Trump administration
After attempting to ban TikTok via an executive order in 2020, Trump launched his official account on the platform in June as part of his successful, online-driven presidential campaign. He quickly amassed the largest TikTok following of any U.S. politician, with 14.6 million followers. Biden joined the platform in February to campaign, then signed legislation two months later that would force a sale of the Chinese-owned company to an American entity. After Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, his TikTok account was then used by her team for viral memes, while Harris maintained a separate personal account.
TikTok has argued in its legal challenge to the law that it is unwilling and unable to sell to an American owner. If TikTok’s owner fails to sell the app and the law is enforced, it would no longer be available in the U.S., which experts say likely wouldn’t happen until 2026. During his campaign, Trump suggested that he would intervene to prevent a TikTok ban, allowing the platform to remain accessible in the U.S.
Trump’s TikTok videos — featuring soundbites from campaign rallies, interactions with voters and appearances with celebrities and influencers — get the most consistent views out of all of the politicians’, and most of his top comments are positive.
While Trump has flipped his stance on TikTok, his pick for Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, has supported a ban on TikTok. Trump’s picks for his administration can’t be confirmed until he takes office, with Biden’s administration continuing to serve until Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
At least five Biden administration officials, including Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, have verified TikTok accounts. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg leads the way with over 770,000 TikTok followers, while Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has a verified TikTok account with just over 1,100 followers. Haaland began posting on TikTok in September to campaign for Harris, but saw limited growth and engagement on the platform.
While the presidential candidates from both parties used TikTok to campaign, despite previously stating their opposition to its Chinese ownership, Hunt said Trump is more likely to be perceived as having organically changed his mind. Trump joined the app while he was out of office, at the same time he reversed his position on TikTok. In contrast, Biden and Harris continued to oppose TikTok despite using it to campaign, which highlighted an ongoing inconsistency.
“The hypocrisy is so blatant on the surface when you’re paying attention to the way they’re voting and talking about this, that it’s a huge threat to national security,” Hunt said. “Then to see the president of the United States posting on it not that many months afterward, it’s pretty stark.”
Some House members campaign on TikTok despite security concerns
In March, 353 representatives voted in favor of a forced sale of TikTok, 65 voted against it, and 14 did not vote. Of the 353 who supported the bill to force a sale, 13 have verified TikTok accounts, all of whom are Democrats.
Of those who voted against the bill, 17 have verified TikTok accounts. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who did not vote, has a verified TikTok account. Another two dozen accounts that appear to belong to politicians who are currently in office are unverified, meaning they don’t have a blue check mark of authenticity.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, voted present. She has an unverified TikTok account with 140,000 followers, putting her in the top 20 most-followed representatives on the platform, although she hasn’t posted since September 2023. A representative for Crockett said she doesn’t use the account due to security concerns, but leaves her account up to distinguish it from impersonator accounts, which the representative said can be difficult to report.
“While I agreed with the spirit of the bill, I have grave concerns about the constitutionality of it as written, as well as concerns about whether this was the best solution to the problems posed by TikTok, or indeed, a solution that can even be effectively enforced,” Crockett said in a statement about her vote. “I have just as many concerns, if not more, about the algorithms employed by X and Meta.”
Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat from North Carolina, has 2.2 million TikTok followers, making him the most-followed House member on the platform. Despite that, in March he voted to force a sale of TikTok.
Jackson posts on TikTok about twice a month, with videos frequently surpassing millions of views. He follows a similar format in each one, speaking directly to the viewer in a well-lit, focused shot that centers him entirely in the vertical video frame. Jackson explains what is going on in Congress in a conversational style, with one comment calling his videos “the modern day fireside chat.” He has used this style since late 2022, when he was first elected as a national representative after serving in the North Carolina Senate for eight years.
In a TikTok video that reached almost 6 million viewers, Jackson apologized to his followers for voting against TikTok’s Chinese parent company. Explaining his vote, he said he heard “genuinely alarming” information about TikTok in congressional briefings and that he believed the bill was more likely to force TikTok’s owner to sell the app to an American buyer than to lead to a ban.
Jackson’s TikTok viewers expressed their dissatisfaction with his explanation in the comment section. But Jackson kept posting. He used TikTok to campaign for North Carolina attorney general and won by nearly 3 percentage points.
Hunt said the nature of TikTok’s algorithm also makes it easier for creators to recover from a controversy like the one Jackson weathered, because videos are continually shown to new audiences.
“You basically have this ever-renewing chance to make a first impression or start over and lure people in,” Hunt said.
One of the unverified TikTok accounts in the House appears to belong to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida who voted to divest TikTok from its owner. She has almost 7,000 TikTok followers and a verified YouTube account with almost 6,000 subscribers. Luna’s communications director said that her TikTok account was for personal use and is not an official campaign account.
A Trump-endorsed candidate and a former model with a large Instagram following, Luna became the director of Hispanic engagement for conservative youth outreach nonprofit Turning Point USA in 2018. Despite her account’s unofficial status, Luna started using TikTok to campaign in February 2020, winning the Republican primary but losing to the Democratic incumbent. Her last TikTok was uploaded in December 2022, the year she was elected.
In 2022, she anchored a short-lived online podcast production that featured her at a desk, bathed in neon pink and purple lighting. Luna put some of her podcast clips on TikTok, along with videos that used trending sounds and music to attack Democrats.
Luna’s communications director said she stopped using TikTok that year after growing concerns about Chinese “meddling” with the app. He said Luna’s account remains up as a placeholder to distinguish it from impersonators, like Crockett’s account.
Of the 65 representatives who voted against the bill, 16 were Democrats who have verified TikTok accounts and one was a Republican who has a verified TikTok account, Rep. Nancy Mace from South Carolina. Mace, who has over 90,000 TikTok followers, has argued that the legislation is an example of “government overreach,” writing on X, “Sure, some of TikTok’s content is ‘bad,’ but that is all over the internet.”
“That’s not a coincidence,” Hunt said, referring to Mace’s presence on TikTok and her opposition to the bill. “She’s not going to get rid of the thing that makes her relevant.”
In the Senate, TikTok users vote along clear party lines
In April, 79 senators voted in support of the forced sale of TikTok, 18 voted against it, and three senators did not vote. Unlike in the House, where elected officials with verified TikTok accounts voted in both directions across party lines, 10 Senate Democrats with verified TikTok accounts voted to force a sale of the platform, while one independent and one Senate Republican with verified TikTok accounts voted against the bill to do so.
Two of the Senate Democrats who voted to force a sale of TikTok were Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who each have more than 400,000 TikTok followers. Ossoff, who got millions of views posting about topics like Covid-19 vaccines using TikTok meme formats, hasn’t posted since November 2021.
Booker still posts on TikTok, and he used his account to support Harris’ campaign. Booker leaned into the “Brat”-themed launch of Harris’ TikTok presence, a nod to pop artist Charli XCX’s latest album, which performed well on social media. Booker’s profile picture on his TikTok account is his first name in the style of the “Brat” album cover, and he made multiple references to the meme on TikTok, as well as Harris’ “coconut tree” soundbite meme.
In an April 2024 statement, Booker said he would not have voted to force a sale of TikTok if it had been presented as a stand-alone measure, versus being part of a wider national security and foreign aid package.
“I would have voted against this provision if I had the opportunity, not because I don’t have concerns about Tiktok or its ownership structure — I do — but because I worry that Congress is missing an opportunity to address larger issues with social media in general, from screen addiction, to its negative effects on mental health, to the alarming impact it can have on the well-being of American children, to privacy, to the stunning proliferation of hate speech online, to its use for bullying and intimidation, to its toxic spread of misinformation, and many more,” Booker’s statement said.
The sole independent who has a verified TikTok account, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voted against the bill. Even though Sanders told the New York Times’ editorial board in 2020 that he has no apps on his own phone, Sanders has the largest TikTok following in the Senate, with 1.5 million followers. His account has been active since March 2020, shortly before he dropped out of that year’s presidential race. In the beginning, Sanders’ campaign referenced TikTok memes on the platform, but his account has since shifted to posting high-quality video clips of the senator speaking and talking to constituents.
“Part of the value of having a national platform like Bernie Sanders is you have tremendous leverageable fundraising potential,” Hunt said. “You have the tools to invest in the types of things that actually reach your voters.”
While there are more than twice as many verified TikTok users in the House as in the Senate, the average senator’s follower count is almost twice as large as the average representative’s — which tracks with their larger constituencies. Senators with verified TikTok accounts have an average of 318,000 TikTok followers, while representatives with verified TikTok accounts have an average of 178,000 TikTok followers.
Members of Congress have spent more time on TikTok, both in terms of the age of their accounts and the frequency of their posts, than the highest-profile members of the Biden administration and the Harris and Trump campaigns.
“Until we are going to be brave enough to stand up to that big tech lobby and pass comprehensive data privacy legislation, we’re not going to be any safer,” Hunt said. “We’ve created this really strange position where we’re making enemies out of individual services instead of making a playbook of rules that everyone has to play by to keep consumers safe online.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
