The term "triangulating" refers to the Alinskyite principle of balancing policy decisions based on input from (1) public opinion polling, (2) the wishes of the White House and (3) the wishes of Congress. It is an election year ploy to convince "moderate" voters that the White House (et al) are not really as dangerous and radical as they have been in the first three years of the term. 

That sort of tactic is BTW, David Axelrod and James Carville's  specialty. From that perspective, allowing the Xiden administration to get away with appearing to be concerned about something like this is the price of actually taking action to stop TikTok. 

It's not a cut and dried issue, but I doubt that there will be a public rational dialectic on its nuances. 

Public opinion is not favorable toward the PRC, so this may be somewhat influenced by lingering resentment from the Wuhan Flu catastrophe.