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As my colleague, Ben Kew, reported back on March 6, a complete ban on the Chinese Communist Party-owned social media app TikTok is now closer than ever, with bipartisan legislation requiring the popular app to be divested from its Chinese owner ByteDance or face an outright ban on app stores in the United States.
The legislation mirrors the position previously held by then-President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order that would have effectively banned the use of TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sold the app to a company without ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
But now that Congress is considering legislation that would accomplish exactly what Trump first supported, he has changed his position on the wildly popular social media app.
In a post to TruthSocial last Thursday, Trump said:
If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, to do better. They are a true Enemy of the People!
Why?
Another question begging to be asked: Is TikTok, with proven ties to the CCP, more of an enemy of the American people than “Zuckerschmuck,” or vice versa?
Trump changes position on banning TikTok. pic.twitter.com/ztgYk7TWrI
— MikesRight (@RealLibSmacker) March 11, 2024
Theories — both conspiracy and otherwise — abound as to why Trump changed his position, but two stand out as reasonable possible explanations. One of them, as Trump strategist Alex Bruesewitz told Axios:
I don’t get the rush to do it in the middle of an election year when we are making tremendous progress with Gen-Z. MAGA content does very well on TikTok. And Meta is suppressing MAGA content on both Facebook and Instagram.
Another, according to Axios, is Trump’s repaired relationship with billionaire Jeff Yass, who owns a large financial stake in ByteDance and has spent millions backing lawmakers who support TikTok.
Days before his TikTok reversal, Trump publicly praised Yass for inviting him to a retreat held by Club for Growth, a powerful conservative group that also opposes banning the app.
Yass had previously donated $4.9 million to Vivek Ramaswamy, who last year became the only Republican presidential candidate to join TikTok — an app he once called “digital fentanyl.”
Yass is also a major donor to Club for Growth.
Does the reversal strike you as atypical of Trump? Given his generally strongly-held positions, it does me — at least somewhat. The question is, is this a “new” Trump who might be prone to chasing the prevailing winds if he wins in November? I don’t see that happening, but I didn’t anticipate that he’d flip-flop on TikTok, either.
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