One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president will be to rescue TikTok, one of America’s favorite social media obsessions, his allies tell The Washington Post.
If the app does not find an owner based outside of China by January, Americans are set to lose access to it under a bill passed by a large, bipartisan majority in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden. Under that law, TikTok’s Chinese parent company is due to divest by Jan. 19. However, it has challenged the ban as unconstitutional, potentially pushing it into a second Trump administration.
According to four sources in Trump’s orbit, the president-elect is ready to advocate for TikTok as needed.
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“There are many ways to hold China to account outside alienating 180 million U.S. users each month,” Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told The Washington Post. “Trump recognized early on that Democrats are the party of bans—gas-powered cars, menthol cigarettes, vapes, plastic straws, and TikTok—and to let them own that draconian, anti-personal choice space.”
Trump has flip-flopped on the app. In 2020, he threatened to ban it and signed an order that would do so amid concerns that it allowed the Chinese government access to Americans’ data. But by spring of this year, he reversed course. He even joined the app himself, racking up more than 14 million followers, and promised to save TikTok.
To achieve that goal, he could either push Congress to repeal the law or simply instruct his team not to enforce it. But both paths could prove tricky, with the first leaving leaders in Washington—likely including new members of his own administration, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a China hawk, and Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem—worried about China’s influence.
The second, meanwhile, could leave app stores that offer the app leery of skirting the law according to Trump’s whims.
