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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America,

a presidential election year. And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one,

because we want to and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I'm delighted to be joined by the spectators Matt McDonald,

who is managing editor of the Spectators World Edition in America.

He's in Washington at the moment.

And we're going to be talking about the attempt to ban,

and I use that word incorrectly on purpose, the attempt to ban a TikTok in America, because it's a big story there this week, and it's not really a ban, is it, Matt,

but it is, it's a ban on a Chinese own TikTok, or a CCP linked TikTok, you could say.

Yeah, that's, that's fair to say. Thank you for

having me. Basically what's what's happening is there's a bill has been passed in the house in the lower

house called the protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications act.

And basically what that would require if it's passed in the Senate,

is it would make TikTok's parent company Bite Dance sell its US entity within six months.

Or if, and if it doesn't, it risks losing access to American app stores and web hosting services. So they were basically say

this app needs to not be owned by a country who's considered to be a foreign adversary of

America. And the penalty for doing that is losing your ability to download that app in

...