Robby Starbuck

Robby Starbuck Discusses Why He’s Banned on TikTok, Warns CCP Has ‘No Good Intentions’ for the App

Jan 23, 2025

Robby Starbuck, Tennessee political commentator and documentary filmmaker, is warning that the Chinese Communist Party-controlled (CCP) app TikTok continues to have “no good intentions” as the Trump administration negotiates a deal to keep the app operational in the U.S.

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating his intentions to consult with his “advisors, including the heads of relevant departments and agencies on the national security concerns posed by TikTok, and to pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans.”

Trump’s executive order came one day after TikTok was unavailable to U.S. users for a short period of time as part of the former administration’s law that required the app to be divested from its parent company, ByteDance, by January 19 or cease operations in the U.S.

Trump, prior to signing the executive order, floated the idea of the U.S. having a 50 percent ownership position of TikTok in a joint venture in order for the app to continue to be operational in the U.S.

“My initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50 percent ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase we so choose,” Trump said.

Starbuck, whose account and any mention of his 2024 documentary “The War On Children” have been banned from the social media app TikTok, is warning that, despite a deal being worked out to keep the platform operational, the app remains a tool for the CCP to collect data from American users.

“[TikTok], at the end of the day, is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party,” Starbuck said bluntly on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.

“I think Trump is using the art of the deal here to get a large chunk of that company into U. S. hands and control so that the algorithm can fall under U.S. purview. However, at the end of the day, we’re dealing with communists in China, and they have no good intentions for this application,” Starbuck added.

Starbuck said the intentions behind TikTok were clear as his documentary was banned from the platform, which partly exposed how the app for China-based users is an “entirely different” app than the one available to U.S.-based users.

“In the movie, The War on Children, the reason [China] hated it so much was not just the destruction of gender ideology and all that, but we explain in the film and show evidence of the fact that TikTok in China is an entirely different application than the one our kids are given,” Starbuck explained.

“Kids in China go on their version of TikTok and they’re fed a steady stream of educational content only, period. No brain rot, no crazy stuff. It’s only educational stuff. Here in the U.S., They’re intentionally feeding kids what I call brain rot – let’s confuse them about their gender, let’s feed them horrible political views, let’s teach them that communism is good, and glorify hedonism,” Starbuck added.

Watch the full interview:

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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Robby Starbuck” by The Robby Starbuck Show.

 

 

 

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