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Donald Trump is now battling to save TikTok after learning that he is a superstar on the app – and that it helped power his election win.
The president-elect has U-turned on his previous position and vowed to ‘save TikTok’ ahead of the scheduled shutdown on January 19.
The app is due to be banned nationwide after Beijing-based owners ByteDance ignored Joe Biden’s ultimatum calling for its sale.
Last year, the president signed a law in response to Justice Department concerns that the platform could be exploited by Chinese spies and used as a channel for Beijing propaganda.
Despite initially favoring a ban, Trump is now contemplating issuing an executive order shortly after taking office. This order would temporarily halt the ban for a period of 60 to 90 days, as reported by the Washington Post.
A source told the outlet that Trump is eager to be viewed as ‘making a deal’ after the deadline passes.
‘Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?’ Trump said in a Truth Social post this month.
His change of heart is reportedly due to the massive amount of support he garnered for his White House run through the campaign.
Trump and his team, who are known for being fixated on ratings, have generated over 4 billion views on TikTok. This surpasses the viewership of major figures like Taylor Swift and political opponent Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump is now battling to save TikTok after learning how much the app benefited him during the election
He used Gen-Z Republicans such as Jack Fuetterer to help boost his engagement with young voters
During the election, he made great use of young Republicans’ online following.
Between November 2023 and May 2024, there was double the pro-trump content on the app than pro-Biden, according to an internal review reported by Puck.
Trump’s account was formed in June and hit three million followers in just 24 hours and today boasts 14 million.
During his campaign, he was shadowed by 22-year-old Jack Fuetterrer who he dubbed ‘TikTok Jack’ who captured footage to upload to the platform.
His right-hand man Dillon Renfro was tasked with scouring the app for trends that team Trump could tap into, Deseret News reports.
‘I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,’ Trump said last month.
This has been evidenced by the fact that TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew has been invited to attend his inauguration on Monday.
Trump is is now mulling an executive order once in office that would suspend the ban for 60 to 90 days
The Supreme Court is currently weighing TikTok’s challenge to the ban, however it is expected to allow it to proceed.
Legal experts have cast doubt on whether an executive order would be enough to overturn the order, which passed through Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.
‘TikTok will still be banned, and it will still be illegal for Apple and Google to do business with them. But it will make the president’s intention not to enforce the law that much more official,’ said University of Minnesota professor Alan Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department adviser.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, has declined to say whether she would commit to enforcing the law.
The order requires distributors like Apple and Google to stop offering TikTok in their app stores, and requires service providers like Oracle to withhold the infrastructure that the app runs on.
Companies that violate these terms could be subject to a fine of $5,000 per each user who accesses TikTok.
Sunday is the deadline for the TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, to sell its US assets or be pulled from US app stores due to concerns over the app’s links to the communist Chinese government.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has been invited to Trump’s inauguration which will take place the day after the ban goes into effect
Under that ban, Americans would still be able to use the app but new downloads would be blocked and its software would slowly degrade over time due to a lack of updates.
Sources revealed Wednesday that TikTok is threatening to shut down its app for US users this Sunday if a federal ban goes into effect.
Under the shutdown, people attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban.
The company also plans to give users an option to download all their data so that they can take a record of their personal information, they said.
Around 150 million Americans use TikTok – close to half the population.
While TikTok is extremely popular among younger users and members of Gen-Z, a third of adults in the US also use the app.