Senator Rubio Urges Trump To Scrap Tiktok-Oracle Deal If Bytedance Ties Remain

👤Marco Rubio and five other Republican senators called on the Trump administration to reject a proposed deal for Oracle <ORCL.N> to become a “trusted technology provider” for popular social media platform TikTok’s U.S. operations if ties to Chinese owner Bytedance remain.

👤Marco Rubio, the first senator to call on the administration to investigate TikTok over censorship concerns, said in the letter to President 👤Donald Trump that “serious questions” remained about Oracle’s role, the technology it would provide to Bytedance, and the future of the application’s algorithm.

“We remain opposed to any deal that would allow China-based or controlled entities to retain, control or modify the code or algorithms that operate any U.S.-based version of TikTok,” Rubio wrote in the letter, dated Wednesday.

“We are heartened that this deal still requires government approval, and if reports indicating this proposed deal will retain links to ByteDance or other Chinese-controlled entities, we strongly urge the administration to reject such a proposal on national security grounds,” he added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter, also signed by Senators Thom Tillis, Rick Scott, John Cornyn, Roger Wicker and Dan Sullivan, is part of a growing chorus of lawmakers raising questions about the deal.

On Monday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who heads a national security panel reviewing the proposal, calling for the deal to be scuttled, if it does not allow for the “full emancipation of TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Part control.”