 Was this line of questioning to the TikTok CEO from Senator Tom Cotton way too harsh? Was it racially fueled? Let's talk about it. Yeah, let's run the clip. You said today, as you often say, that you live in Singapore. Of what nation are you a citizen? Singapore. Are you a citizen of any other nation? No, Senator. Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? Senator, I served my nation in Singapore. No, I did not. Do you have a Singaporean passport? Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore. Do you have any other, do you have any other passports from any other nations? No, Senator. Your wife is an American citizen, your children are American citizens. That's correct. Have you ever applied for American citizenship? No, no, not yet. Okay. Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party? Senator, I'm Singaporean. No. Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party? No, Senator. Again, I'm Singaporean. Let me ask you some hopefully simple questions. Boom, man. I'm telling you this Senate hearing, Andrew, Mark Zuckerberg was there. Shou Zee Chu, the CEO of American TikTok, or just TikTok in general. Obviously, it is owned by ByteDance, which also does Dou Ying in China. Man, this was some theater. Yeah, no. This was an intense exchange and it almost felt like a scene from a movie like A Few Good Men. You know, when Tom Cruise is in the courtroom with Jack Nicholson, you can't handle the truth. Or what about A Time to Kill? Oh, any crazy courtroom movie. But a lot of people were also bringing up that Tom Cotton sounded like Joseph McCarthy in 1952. Yeah, so I guess what basically is going on, guys, obviously, there's this whole congressional hearing with Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Chu. Shou Chu, sorry, from TikTok. And basically, they're getting grilled by different sides of the aisle, right, left. It doesn't really matter. Basically, a lot of these older politicians are trying to grill these guys, right? But they're really doing it for theater because they cannot pass the laws themselves. It's almost like if you really want to get into it, they're trying to score points for reelection or to get more donations. If you really want to know the truth, if you really want to cut to the core of it, because they're not like the decision makers, it's going to have to go through a crazy process. This hearing is not the actual courtroom. But it sounds like those guys are the judge and the jury, right? It sounds like something's going to happen right after this. Like there's going to be a verdict and then TikTok's going to have to regulate or Instagram's going to have to regulate or something. But I don't think that's how it works. So correct me if I'm wrong, guys. Political theater. There's no jury and there's no judge that's going to lay down the law and then all of a sudden these guys get dragged away. No. So anyways, guys, I think what most people are referring to is that Tom Cotton sounded kind of racist. Now, whether you think his line of questioning was fair, because it is fair to question people. It is fair to question Shochu's loyalties. However, they were questioning him as if he was a white American. Yeah, it was like, if you're Singaporean, you are neutral. You know what I'm saying? Like you are politically neutral as a Singaporean. Right, right, right. Like so I'm saying, why are they asking him? They're like, Tom Cotton's like, I'm a white man. You present as a white man because you know, I'm from an Ivy League school, even though I don't talk like it. You're from an Ivy League school, Shochu. Why don't you pledge loyalty to that team Anglo? Yeah. It was, it didn't seem like that. I was like, he's a foreigner. It's, it's, uh, you know, we'll get into it guys. There's a lot of comments, but anyways, we're going to break it down. So please hit that like button and check out other episodes of the hot pop boys. David, people need to check out small sauce.com, even though we're sold out right now from search one, assistantly guys. I'll say this, listen, the delivery sounded racist. Okay, I am not going to say that Tom Cotton can't ask Shochu because he was the CFO of bite dance. For sure there's something like that's a valid line of questioning, right? Right. Given his history, he worked in Beijing for Xiaomi, and then he was CFO of bite dance and now he's CEO of Tik Tok, which is separate, supposedly. Totally valid for them to question him. But then part of me is like, yeah, of course he's not going to be as anti-China as a white old white guy in America. Right. I was like, why would he be? But remember he did, he did. Obviously it's not like he didn't say the truth when they asked about Tandem and Square earlier that he said what it was. He said it was a massacre. Yeah, he said what it was. I think that, yeah, the line, the questioning itself wasn't racist, but man, Tom Cotton, he might be racist. No, Tom Cotton said a bunch of stuff. I'll just pop it up here and this is like about whether you're talking about the Israel Gaza situation. About slavery. Oh, talking about slavery. He said some stuff that got him in hot water, like even his own like other white Republicans were like, man, this guy, Tom is really going crazy right now. I just think anything, anytime Tom Cotton is yelling, it might sound racist. Even if he's young. And it's probably because he is like kind of racist himself. So it almost ended up de-legitimizing his point where you, I think you could argue that he is valid in his line of questioning, but he just sounded like he was trying to play a racist in a movie. Anyway guys, we just got to get into the comment section. Somebody said he has no idea where Singapore is. He's probably asking himself, how can someone who's not Chinese look like that? He's got to be Chinese. Someone said, listen guys, he went to Harvard Law. He's not stupid. He's just clearly proud of being extremely racist. Do you think that Tom Cotton doesn't care? Other people said that he plays up being a fake redneck, much like they said George Bush Jr. was also a fake redneck to win votes and win money and win power. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, this is a pretty common tactic in America because a lot of people are emotional about things, right? It's almost like anybody pretending to be down with a squad where they're not really down with it. Some people say Kamala pretends to be like super down with like black Americans. People would say Tom Cotton, Larry the Cable Guy, not a real redneck. Fake for money reasons, for marketing reasons, but everybody buys it up. What do you think about all these comments, people saying, I'm a Singaporean. This is offensive. This is racist. Yeah. I don't think in itself, in a vacuum, it's super racist. Obviously, he's trying to dig and find and have him admit that there's some type of connection between him and higher ups at the Communist Party. But I think they, it's tough. I mean, I guess Singaporeans have always said they're not Chinese and they're not Communist. Obviously, there's no connection. Like Singapore, by the way, is 75% ethnically Chinese. Ethnically Chinese. They do speak Mandarin. That is a little bit confusing for simple people to understand. Well, the Chinese Singaporeans speak Mandarin. Yes, the Chinese Singaporeans. So, I mean, Mandarin is a commonly or popular language. I want to say it's one of their national languages. Well, English is for sure. And then after that, I'm not sure. I believe Mandarin and Malay are there too. Right. But then ultimately, yeah, it's not China and it's not even close to China. Right. Somebody said, not that I am a fan of cotton, but he is correct. TikTok can claim to be Singaporean, the CEO can, but its parent is by dance, which is Chinese, which cannot be trusted. So a lot of people were basically like, yeah, I'm not saying that Tom Cotton didn't come to rock cars like a A-hole, but I'm just saying, I like what he said. He being tough on them. Yeah, being tough on people like Mark Zuckerberg and Shochu is legit. It's legit. They were all going hard at him. But again, what happens now? Is anything going to change? You know what? I think if Tom Cotton wanted to go for it, he should have just said, is it true that when we go to break, you and Mark Zuckerberg are going to speak communist Chinese Mandarin to each other? Because if you guys don't know, Zuckerberg is essentially somewhat fluent in Mandarin. He can speak Mandarin, yes. I think that he should have just brought that up. He should have been like, see, that's why you're here because you speak Mandarin and Shochu, you speak Mandarin. Ni Hao, say it to him. Ni Hao. Yeah, that'd be funny. What if they were like, listen, Shochu, I'd like for you to speak to Mark Zuckerberg fully in Chinese. Go for it. No, no, he was like, in communist Chinese, specifically the communist dialect. With the communist dialect. What do you think about the McCarthyism? And a lot of people are accusing him of McCarthyism because it felt like Joseph McCarthy saying people, calling people in 1950. Because Tom Cotton kind of has this like old school voice. Like we said, this is from like a bygone era. I think if people want to be mad, they should just be like, the CEO of the most popular app is not American. Not that he's Chinese because he's not from China. He's from Singapore, which is not China. But I think like, why don't they just, why don't they just ban all like foreign CEOs from popular apps or something like that? Like, I don't understand if they want to go that far, you know what I mean? Like it just seems like, I don't fully understand what he's trying to say. Because it is an Asian based app. Well, I felt like he was trying to say this, like Mark Zuckerberg, he's like, you know, got the Chinese wife speaks Chinese, shows Z2 is Singaporean. But obviously his parents, I think his grandparents are from China. Like, I feel like they're basically like, you ain't supporting the Anglo fear enough. Guys. Like none of y'all supporting me in my constituency, which is like a very vague way of putting it, being like you guys aren't on my team and my team is more patriotic and on the side of these families whose lives are being ruined by social media. So you guys are on the other squad. And it's like, it is a very unintellectual way of saying it, but it's also very emotional and it's probably appealing to their base. Hey, you guys want to know a funny fact? David, you know who went to Harvard? Mark Zuckerberg. You know who went to Harvard Business School? Showed you. And you know who also graduated from Harvard? Is Senator Tom Cotton. You got three Harvard graduates yelling at each other. I think there's a common thread. It's Harvard. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. A lot of people go to Harvard. They just be in the mix. Yeah, man. They be in the mix. I would say Andrew Yang has a pretty funny quote. He goes, uh, yeah, uh, people from Brown University are just trying to solve and fix the world that all the Harvard graduates messed up. Because Harvard people be powerful. They be swinging the hammer around, whether you say it's for good or bad. Somebody said Senator Tom Cotton did not ask a single question about child online safety regarding how it is implemented at TikTok. That's funny. Yeah. I would say he did a little bit. I think he talked to Facebook mostly about it, or that was Ted Cruz. Right, right, right. Ted Cruz also called TikTok, TicTac. Tom Cruz, I mean, I call him Tom Cruz. Ted Cruz also cannot be taken seriously in many ways. I don't know. This is like, it's like not wrong to have this hearing, but like, it's just like, I don't know, silly, man. It's silly because everybody's acting like they're in a movie and they're like Judge Dredd or the, you know, the jury, the executioner and the judge. Like I'm like, you're just a guy at a hearing asking questions, but your tone is fiery like a Baptist preacher talking about like hell and brimstone and everything. That's what I think is so ridiculous about it. And I think people are like, am I watching a movie scene right now? Like I said, do I think though, that Shou-Zi Chu is going to say a bunch of things that are against the Chinese government? No, I don't think so, because his parent company is ByteDance. Why would he? And I guess I'll tell you this too though, no American CEO is going to answer any of those questions that Tom Cotton asked him. Like I'm saying, no American CEO is going to answer those the way Tom Cotton wants him to. Oh. Yeah, because they all are businessmen. Right. Everybody has business considerations in their life and incentives and different people that the markets that they have to answer to, shareholders that they have to answer to, boards of directors that they have to answer to. So I just don't understand why he's like, see you don't hate China like I do Shou-Zi Chu. That means you're bad. But you know like Zoom, you know that app Zoom, like that founder is from China too, born in China. Eric Yen. Yeah, Eric Yen started in America. From Shandong. So why is like nobody's going to question him? Like there's so many people you could question technically if you want to be, oh, you're from China? Are you part of the Communist Party? Are your parents part of the Communist Party? You know what I mean? There's just so many, but yeah, I guess. I guess what I'm saying is like, man, I get it, China and America are rivals, but for sure, and I'm not saying that there isn't a lot of like jostling, like two players in the post elbowing each other and stuff going on behind the scenes. But to blame all of your problems in your country on a boogeyman, it is overdoing it. Yeah. Because you're basically trying to say like, we're not responsible for anything. Yeah. Like it's like. Yeah, get your kids off TikTok. I mean, that's part of the problem. Hey man, if they want to ban TikTok, it's going to be only better for me and you. All right, everybody, you let us know in the comments down below, what do you think was Tom Cotton's questioning uncalled for? Was it more of his tone? I think it was more of his tone and also who he is. Anyways guys, let me know in the comments down below and until next time, we out. Peace. Yes, they do. So you're Chinese? I, as I stated before, Senator, I am from Singapore and I am Singaporean. Are you a member of the Communist Party of China? No, I am not, Senator. Are you sure you're not affiliate? Do people use TikTok to communicate? Is there something called the TikTok community? Yeah, yes, we do call it a TikTok community when there's a group of creators that they work together to create TikTok. When you're at home eating dinner, sharing plates of food, what is that called? Family style, sir. Communo style! You are a commuter Chinese, dammit! I, I, yeah.