So we have a lot to get to this evening, but I do want to start with the news that is currently

breaking the internet, quite literally. Today, a federal panel of judges upheld a new law,

one signed by President Biden, banning the popular Chinese-owned social media company TikTok

in the United States. The law gives TikTok's China-based parent company Bite Dance until January 19th of next year to sell the platform to a non-Chinese company or it will no longer be available to U.S. users.

This is a complex, high-stakes policy that will require experienced diplomats to try and carry it out.

Diplomats like this guy, Nicholas Burns,

President Biden's ambassador to China. Now, Ambassador Burns is a career foreign service officer.

He has served as ambassador to NATO and to Greece, and he has served at high-level positions

in and all over the State Department. But yesterday, we learned who Donald Trump wants to put in that same position,

former Republican Senator David Perdue of Georgia.

Purdue is likely being rewarded for his years of service to Donald Trump as a stalwart election

denier.

In 2022, Purdue unsuccessfully tried to primary Georgia's Republican governor,

Brian Kemp, after Kemp refused to go along with Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020

election results. Now, David Purdue is not entirely devoid of experience in China. He is a

former resident of Hong Kong, who reportedly spent time working in the region as a businessman at Dollar General, which is a discount goods company, and at Sarah Lee, the baked goods company, and at Reebok, the shoe company.

But it's kind of hard to see how a former businessman who spent years trying to court Chinese businesses has the diplomatic chops to go toe to toe to

with the Chinese government on delicate issues like the potential sale of TikTok.

And yet, when it comes to Trump's most questionable appointments, Purdue's nomination is not

likely to be high on anybody's list. And that is because Donald Trump

has nominated so many supremely unfit people to important government positions that it's hard

to keep track of them all. Consider Trump's pick to lead the Internal Revenue Service, former

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