Leah Feiger: And I trust, baby.
Vittoria Elliott: But if that happens, which bank will give him money after seeing what he did to Twitter?
Leah Feiger: If he tweets about it in the next week or so, though, Tori, you'll have to buy me lunch.
Vittoria Elliott: I don't understand why this is my responsibility. I can commit to drinking coffee.
Leah Feiger: Finished. Okay, let's leave it at that. When we come back, we'll cover all the political influencers working on presidential campaigns on TikTok.
[Break]
Leah Feiger: Welcome back to the WIRED Politics Lab. At the same time the Senate passed the TikTok ban/divestment bill Tuesday night, Team Biden posted a TikTok. Makena, Tori, have you seen this?
Vittoria Elliott: Wild.
Makena Kelly: Yes, we did.
Leah Feiger: Please describe it for me.
Loudspeaker: You have been strong with us and we will be strong with you, sir.
Makena Kelly: It's just a clip of a meeting of some workers in March, but at the same time, it has these cute little halo emojis, angel emojis.
Leah Feiger: It has been very well managed. His TikTok team knows what they're doing.
Makena Kelly: And very ignorant about what's happening on the Senate floor.
Leah Feiger: How can this be? I mean, Biden just signed this bill. Please help me understand the context here.
Vittoria Elliott: I think one of the important issues is that this bill is embedded in a large foreign aid bill, and a lot of the headlines are around the fact that we're giving $60 billion to Ukraine, that aid is coming. Israel and Taiwan. and those are all big focuses of Biden's platform. He has been campaigning for months.
Leah Feiger: Absolute.
Vittoria Elliott: To get this Ukraine aid bill passed, and I think realistically, that's A, the focus of the administration, and B, what they want all of us to focus on, which is, hey, this is a very important thing. Congress is ineffective. This has been a really underperforming Congress this term, and this is a big win for a really big campaign promise.
Makena Kelly: And notably, Biden's statement last night released immediately after the vote did not even mention TikTok.
Leah Feiger: That points to the fact that he later posted a TikTok or that his campaign later posted a TikTok. What are TikTok video comments?
Makena Kelly: Biden's campaign may have been unaware of what was happening on the Senate floor, but their followers on TikTok were not.
Leah Feiger: Great.
Makena Kelly: If you look through all the comments, it's like “Hold the TikTok, prayer emoji. Keep the TikTok, Joey.” It's literally all random, “Vote for Biden” or “Trump will save America” or whatever, but it's basically like “#KeepTikTok.”
