Ages. The thing i dont like is that without tiktok, you could make facebook bigger. Tonight, the tiktok vote. And a major Flashing Warning Sign of a cashstrapped candidate. Steve bannon has suggested you have been paid off to switch your view. Then what three dismissed fellmy counts means for Defendant Trump in georgia and the rebirth of a decades old campaign trope. People look around and they say am i better off now than i was four years ago . The very painful answer to the Trump Campaigns question. Doctors say it will wash through, flow through. Interesting terms. And, very accurate. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. The House Of Representatives passed a bill today which could eventually lead to the banning of tiktok. The chinese social media app used by some 150 million americans. It was a somewhat surprising move from congress in this respect. This congress has not been known to pass a lot of substantive bipartisan legislation. But thats what this was. The bill passed 35265. Basically nothing passes by those margins and it cut against traditional partisan lines. The bill earned the enthusiastic support of both the far right speaker of the house mike johnson and his democratic predecessor nancy pelosi. Ranging from Congresswoman Marjorie Tailor greene to alexandria ocasiocortez. This is an interesting and really thorny issue. Personally, i find myself compelled by arguments on both sides of it. On the one hand, tiktok is an incredibly popular tool. A third of americans under 30 say they get their news regularly from the app. And yet no one has any insight into its internal workings. We dont know who is getting shown what or for what reason. There is no way to have any sense of how the algorithm works. The director of National Intelligence warns the allstar is filled with chinese propaganda accounts. That the app attempted to divide social relations. There is not that much congress can do in a deep sense to regulate it. Tiktok is not accountable primarily to u. S. Regulators. It is primarily and fundamentally accountable to the Chinese Government. It is a Chinese Government and the Chinese Government gets to tell it what to do. American social Media Companies like facebook are sure as heck not allowed to operate in china. So just as a fair trade argument you could say the same standards should apply to chinese platforms here. On the other hand, every point i just made about the opaqueness of the algorithm, the risk of misinformation and disinformation, seeking to exacerbate u. S. Divisions, all that, that can also be made about all those american competitors. Who are we kidding . As you watch this legislation voted in today, and the debate, it highlights an essential question. About how democracy functions. How legislation is made. And fundamentally what we want our political representatives to do. We unteam this to evaluate arguments. Ultimately make good faith judgments about what they think is best for the country and for the people they represent. What we dont want our representatives doing is what happens too much in congress. Siding with the folks who write the biggest checks. That is particularly true if the politician in question is in desperate financial straits willing to do anything including selling off their own political platform to any person willing to pony up the most cash. Which brings us to the most prominent republican opponent of todays bill. One donald trump. Now, the expresident we should note is a bit of a late convert to the pro tiktok cause. Here he is as president four years ago. Threatening to ban the app out right. We might be banning tiktok. We might be doing some other things. There are a couple of options but a lot of things are happening so we will see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to tiktok. In fact, trump tried to go through with that ban. Though ultimately it fell apart. Thrown out by the courts. But here he is two days ago in the runup to this vote on cnbc announcing opposing a ban. Frankly, a lot of people on tiktok love it. A lot of young kids on tiktok who will go crazy without it. There there are a lot of users and a lot of good and bad with tiktok but the thing i dont like is without tiktok, you could make facebook bigger and i consider facebook to be an enemy of the people. Right. You may remember facebook banned him. Trump has a vendetta against zuckerberg. The flipflop didnt come out of nowhere. Get this. It was just like two weeks ago, when this vote was scheduled. A republican megadonor jeff yass made the trip down to mar alago to kiss trumps ring. Yass has been something of a trump skeptic before. It is notable because he cofounded a trading firm that owns 15 of tiktoks Parent Company and has a personal stake in the Company Worth tens of billions of dollars. Jeff yass who is an enormous republican donor has a lot riding on this decision. Okay . You dont have to be a genius to put two and two together. Thanks to mitch mcconnell, and the john roberts supreme court, we effectively have no real actual meaningful Campaign Finance left in the country. Someone like jeff yass who has billions of dollars on the line can write A Billion Dollar check to trumps superpac if he is so inclined. Might get a good return on that investment. So it should come as no surprise that the expresident left that meeting with yass with a newfound appreciation for tiktok. And heres the thing. This is not a one off. I am telling you right now, this is now the way policy is going to get formed in this campaign. And in a possible second trump term when the man is in acute financial distress and does not have the liquidity to pony up what he owes in legal penalties. He is way behind in fund raising because he and his operation have already cannibalized huge amounts of small dollar donations already in order to pay off tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Legal fees that going anywhere will probably get worse. A core part of trumps appeal was this lie. That his personal wealth would allow him immune to outside influence. Hillary Clintons Campaign is funded by wall street and hedge fund managers. My campaign is powered by my money. Im selffunneling so im not controlled by all those people that control cruz and hillary. Crooked hillary. I have tens and tens and millions of dollars. Nobody else does. I put my own money into this. Okay, that was always a lie. He raised huge sums of money from donors. In that campaign. Right now, he is more beholden to donors than ever before. He owes millions of dollars. The small donations they have been just cranking. Right . Are showing signs of running dry. There is only so many 10 donations you can get out of people. And so, name your price, billionaires. We have seen it with tiktok. Another unpopular position he once opposed but seems open to because it is what extremely wealthy donors want to see. The expresident is strapped for cash and the republican platform and americas governing agenda perhaps is up for auction to the highest bidder. Joining me now is one of the coauthors of the bill. He serves the Ranking Member on the Intelligence Select Committee and the China Special committee. Congressman, first i guess i would say it is striking that given Donald Trumps opposition to the border bill and to ukraine funding, essentially acted effectively as a veto. Him coming out to oppose this bill did nothing. It didnt affect him in any way today. Yes. You are correct. Look, people saw it as a flip flop. They knew as i was talking to my republican colleagues on the other side, they saw this as a transaction he had engaged in. And it doesnt really affect the way that they would end up voting. All that being said, i thought for a certain period of time, i think that the folks on the other side who were whiping the votes were monitoring closely to see what would happen. But they didnt see an appreciable change in peoples position. I want to give you some of the arguments i have heard against this bill or concerns so you can address them because you have been a big champion. The first is prioritization. I talked to people the last few days like we are banning tiktok . Seems like there is a lot the country needs right now. We havent passed the ukraine funding bill. There are enormous priorities. It is weird this is so pressing that we have to ban tiktok . What do you say to that . First of all, you are absolutely right. We have to do the special supplemental aid to ukraine for instance. And we need to do it. We should have done it months ago. And at this point i dont control what comes before the house. But this is important. This particular bill. It is not a ban on tiktok. But it is a Force Divesting of tiktok by Byte Dance And byte dance as you know is basically controlled by the Chinese Communist party. The editor in chief of byte dance is the secretary of the ccp cell embedded at the highest echelon of the company. And he has been tasked with making sure that tiktok and all products adhere to correct political direction. So what we are asking and as part of this bill, requiring, is to reduce the ownership. To beneath 20 . The threshold by the way for Foreign Ownership in any broadcast outlet in the United States. And making sure that we delength the Chinese Communist partys control of tiktok from its operation. My understanding is that everyone knows and the ccp has said they wont allow for that. So the inevitable result will be tiktok goes away. We all know that is going to happen. That is what is understood to be the path forward . No, not necessarily. You know, the economy in china is tanking right now, chris. Xi jinping, the paramount leader, is at pains to Court Foreign investment to help resuscitate the chinese economy right now. Basically, there has been a shift in thinking about how they would view Byte Dance And zero out that investment. Which is worth billions and billions of dollars right now. Even at the same time they are trying to resuscitate their economy. You know, i think that whatever happens, it is obviously up to Byte Dance And it is up to beijing. But, we dont want beijing to control this platform. There is another argument i have seen. Which is basically look, we have Foreign Companies that operate in the u. S. All the time. It is a globalized capitalism. And we have regulations that all Companies Across the board have to adhere to. So if you are a foreign Car Manufacturer and you want to sell the car here, it has to comply with what the ntsb and other regulators say. If there are concerns about control, about data privacy, whatever, like, you could just pass some package of regulations for all Social Media Apps and say this is the standard. Doesnt matter if you are instagram or tiktok. You have to abide. But that is not what we are doing. We are just going after tiktok. Why . You cant regulate the ccp. It is one thing if there was truly a private entity that was investing here and it is not a foreign adversary controlled Entity Investing here. But what we have is the ccp controlling this entity. As a consequence, unfortunately. What does that mean . When you say the ccp controlling it . There ease a lot that could mean. Just put some meat on the bones of that assertion. Sure. There are a couple of laws in china. The National Security law of 2017 which requires that any company in china must provide access to the ccp. To all of its data on any user anywhere in the world. In addition there is something called the 1993 company law that requires that the ccp embed a party cell at the highest ranks of the company to control the companys operations. Both of those are in effect with regard to byte dance. Tiktok has repeatedly tried to assure american regulators they can divorce themselves from byte dances control and ultimately the ccps control. However, repeatedly, the representations have been false. First, they claimed that american user data would be stored here in america or in singapore. That was false. A lot of the data is stored on prc servers including sensitive financial data. Second, they claimed that nobody in china would be able to access this american user data. That was also proven to be false. Because people in china routinely engineers in china access the data even unbeknown to tiktok, usa employees. And third and finally, they claim that none of this data had been weaponnized against americans. That was false. The best example of this was the surveillance of american journalists using their geo location data ton tiktok. They revealed the previous representations had been false. So when they keep making these false representations, and not being candid, that further makes lawmakers very suspicious. All right, Congressman Roger who notched a big legislative victory. Thanks for joining us tonight. Thank you, chris. Coming up, in a consequential week for the georgia prosecution, a surprise decision by the judge. Not the big one you thought it might be but it has a lot of effect. What does it mean for the case against the expresident . We will get into it next. We will get into it next. I still love to surf, snowboard, and, of course, skate. So, i take Qunol Magnesium to support my muscle and bone health. Qunols extra strength, high absorption magnesium helps me get the full benefits of magnesium. Qunol, the brand i trust. Her uncles unhappy. Im sensing an underlying issue. Its tmobile. It started when we got him under a new plan. But then they unexpectedly unraveled their price lock guarantee. Which has made him, a bit. Unruly. You called yourself the uncarrier. You sing about price lock on those commercials. The price lock, the price lock. So, if you could change the price, change the name its not a lock, i know a lock. So how can we undo the damage . We could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. Their connection is unreal. And we could all unexperience this whole session. Okay, thats uncalled for. The Superior Court judge threw out six counts in georgia bringing them down from to 88. This is the first of two rulings we are expecting from the judge. The second of course, the ruling on efforts to disqualify Fulton CountyDistrict Attorney fani willis in the case. We will expect that decision to come soon. Some of what the judge today should shed some light on how he could rule on that. Joining me now to decode the judges ruling is katie fang, who has been following this case almost closer than anyone else. Katie, first just take us through what arguments the defense made about the charges here and why the judge felt compelled to discard them. Reporter yes, so there is a vehicle and criminal procedure in georgia called a special demur. Basically, it is the defense saying we need more specificity if we want to prepare for the charges set forth in the indictment. And judge mcafee found in certain respects, some of the counts in the indictment that was returned by a grand jury i want to emphasize that, some of these counts did actually meet that standard to merit being dismissed. The idea is they are all the same charges. It is solesslessation of a State Official to violate and earth. They all, the State Officials are Secretary Of State brad and they took an oath. The United States constitution and the georgia constitution have so many different amendments, closets, et cetera. You have to be able to specify which of those clauses of the constitutions were violated by these particular defendants. Thats it. As you noted in the setup, chris, the judge made sure that it was clear for him to note in the footnote. The entire indictment is not dismissed. Willis can seek reindictment on these particular charges with a grand jury. She can seek to appeal it or you know, she can cut her losses now and say im good to go. Otherwise, this is a temporary dismissal without prejudice. And she could seek recourse to get them back. If we could put up the charges i remember. It is funny. I remember when this came out. I remember thinking solicitation, violation of oath by public officer. Three of the ones dismissed. I dont think i thought of that at the crime or i have never seen that before. It is too vague to be chargeable essentially. Under georgia law, the District Attorney has two chances to get it right and then urge georgia law, if you dont get it right, it is dismissed with prejudice. The big one is count one. The rico count. In georgia, the rico State Statute in georgia allows for a stand alone crime of rico and then you set forth the different acts committed by this big experience across the United States of the charged defendants and uncharged coconspirators. That is what people need to remember. That famous phone call, find me the votes that people think is now gone. It is not gone. It is still an overt act part of count one, the rico count and the judge made it clear that the other counts were not gone. I mentioned there is another ruling. The big one we are waiting on. Which is how the judge rules on the motion to dismiss willis from the case. Do you think you got any light. Is there any indication on that . We could expect it by friday. It could come earlier. But some news dumps happen on friday at 5 00 as it were. But you know, <