President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had approved a deal “in concept” between Oracle, Walmart, and ByteDance for the sale of the latter’s popular short form video app TikTok. Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, he said, “I have given the deal my blessing. If they get it done, that's great. If they don't, that's okay, too.” He claimed the deal would create 25,000 jobs in the United States and that the company will be headquartered in Texas, though ByteDance and TikTok did not issue statements confirming those details. New downloads of the app will cease to be available Sunday night in the United States as part of a ban enacted by Trump’s administration, which has asserted that TikTok poses a national security threat to American citizens because of its data privacy practices and connection to the Chinese government.
