Last week, the White House invited 30 TikTokers to create awareness campaigns regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Reportedly, the White House pre-screened questions from these TikTok influencers to ensure they do not ask questions not liked by the administration.
White House Screened Questions of TikTokers Before Sending Them to Jen Psaki
Some of the attendees of the White House meeting last week told Fox News the White House asked TikTokers to submit their questions in advance so they could be scrutinized.
A US-based Ukrainian TikToker, Jules Suzdaltsev, told Fox News he submitted his question to the White House. However, he did not hear from them again, as he submitted the questions at the last minute.
He suggested he wanted to ask what type of Russian reaction would eventually trigger the American military reaction.
Be a loyal TikToker to the @WhiteHouse — the new rule for #FreedomOfSpeech pic.twitter.com/qGXwESQJxg
— Adam Zahi (@Eazzayyy) March 11, 2022
Likewise, many other influencers voiced their concerns along the same lines; some of them even refused to ask any questions. Only a handful of influencers managed to ask their filtered questions last week from the White House.
Reportedly, the White House wanted to screen the questions of TikTokers who had no professional background in journalism.
However, the same practice was observed by Biden’s White House last year as well, even though all of the questions were from professional journalists.
Back then, it was believed the White House communications team wanted to not put press secretary Jen Psaki in trouble for unwanted questions.
Biden is notorious for refusing to answer questions from the press, even though the questions come from journalists who were vocal in speaking against former President Trump.
Biden Now Using TikTokers to Spread Lies on Inflation
Another TikToker attendee of the meeting named Jules Terpak, with a following of more than 271,000 people, stated the meeting ended before she could ask a question.
Terpak has been critical of the narrative of the Biden administration, so she was allegedly denied an opportunity to ask the question.
She wanted to ask how the Biden administration is trying to tackle videos on TikTok that are emerging from anonymous accounts and critical of the American narrative.
According to the TikToker, videos can easily go viral on the platform, even from accounts that are not verified or have no credibility at all.
She further stated some influencers have been trying hard to debunk the TikTok videos; however, they are not being denounced the way they should be.
A whole lot of influencers were not impressed by the meeting. Suzdaltsev stated the episode would be considered as something in between the press briefing and a town hall meeting.
The White House found an opportunity within the whole episode and partnered with some TikTokers to propagate the official narrative of Joe Biden.
Here is a TikToker fresh ftom the White house with new propaganda. 🙄🤦🏼♀️ pic.twitter.com/hqdPTZJBYV
— thezoohouse 💜 (@Thezoohouse_2) March 15, 2022
Ellie Zeiler, an 18-year-old TikToker with over ten million followers, posted a video on her account, stating Russia is responsible for the rising gas inflation in the United States.
