Winning the TikTok Fight, and Why “Secession” Was the Talk of the Capitol

Daniel Miller opens this midweek coffee talk fired up, and with good reason. After a two-week gap and an ice storm that left parts of Austin without power, he uses the bulk of the hour to answer a wave of criticism that landed in his inbox: why is the Texas Nationalist Movement on TikTok, a platform tied to the Chinese Communist Party? His answer is blunt. The communications team built the account to reach younger Texans, the first video alone cleared 1.5 million views, and total views were pushing toward 3 million. Then TikTok pulled the plug with no explanation. TNM lined up its attorney, Fox News picked up the story, and under that pressure TikTok reinstated the account. Miller treats the win as the point: you do not surrender a tool the opposition refuses to give up. He runs the Cold War nuclear-standoff analogy. Nobody wants the weapon, but you keep it because the other side has it.

He goes further on the numbers. TikTok has roughly 80 million monthly active users in the United States, and around 80 percent of them are between 16 and 34. If critics want TNM to reach young voters, that is where it happens, and no other channel delivers that demographic at that scale. He also turns the criticism back on its source. Much of it arrived as Facebook comments, which he calls ironic given the documented record of the federal government pressuring Facebook and Twitter to censor Americans. Be consistent, he argues, or get off all of them.

The second half is about momentum. The House committee assignments dropped that day, and Todd Hunter, not the widely expected Will Metcalf, will chair State Affairs, the committee where the TEXIT bill will land. Miller lays out the full-spectrum campaign behind the surge in support: a 90-day flight of digital ads, targeted billboards, paid search, and volunteer texting in specific districts. He points to the Libertarian Party of Texas backing a vote, the Republican Party of Texas planks 33 and 225, and a Michael Malice interview. The clincher, he says, came at the 2023 AWBD midwinter conference, where the top water-district lobbying and law firms told a room of local officials that Texas secession was the number one topic of the session. His closing ask is relentless. Stop wringing hands and start ringing phones, because the support exists and the only question is whether it gets organized into a vote in 2023.