"I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold," Mnuchin told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday. "It's a great business and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok," he added.

According to CNBC, there is common ground between Mnuchin's Liberty Strategic Capital and ByteDance - as Masa Son's SoftBank Vision Fund invested in ByteDance in 2018, and is also a limited partner in Liberty Strategic.

The bill, which passed overwhelmingly in the House with bipartisan support, next heads to the Senate - which we imagine will pass it and send it to President Joe Biden's desk. Biden has indicated that he will sign it.

"This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There's no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China," Mnuchin said.

According to TikTok, around 170 million Americans use the app, which lawmakers say gives the Chinese government access and influence over the US by delivering tailored content to users with an algorithm that was developed in China (as opposed to every other social media company doing the same thing?).

Major tech investors, including Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla and Keith Rabois, have publicly or privately decried the social media platform as a pernicious influence.

Still, it remains unclear if Chinese government would permit ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. buyer. TikTok has lobbied furiously against the bill, including a concerted pitch to its user base and through videos on its platform.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has implied that a sale is not an option. China foreign minstry spokesperson Wang Wenbin described the bipartisan push as indicative of "robber's logic" towards TikTok, The Financial Times reported Thursday. -CNBC