When Republican lawmakers lined up to condemn TikTok as a national security threat in early 2023, former Trump Aide John McEntee took a different view. At the time, McEntee's position seemed politically isolated. Senator Marco Rubio was calling TikTok "spyware." Representative Mike Gallagher was drafting legislation to force ByteDance, the parent company, to divest. The GOP establishment had found rare bipartisan agreement that the Chinese-owned app represented an existential threat to American data sovereignty.
But while politicians debated national security abstractions, McEntee was building something concrete: a massive conservative following that would reshape how right-wing politicians reach young Americans. His @daterightstuff TikTok account has since amassed over 300 million likes and generated more than 1 billion views, proving that the platform Republicans wanted to ban has become their most effective tool for reaching young voters.
