Republican President-elect Donald Trump indicated on Sunday that he supports allowing TikTok to operate in the United States, at least for a while, saying he wants the social media platform to continue his presidential campaign. The form has received billions of views.
Trump’s comments to a crowd of conservative supporters in Phoenix, Arizona, were one of the strongest signals yet that he opposes TikTok’s potential exit from the US market.
The US Senate passed a law in April requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to shut down the app, citing national security concerns.
TikTok’s owners have tried to overturn the law, and the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. But if the court does not rule in ByteDance’s favor and there is no dissent, the app could be effectively banned in the US on January 19, the day before Trump takes office.
It’s unclear how Trump will reverse the Tik Tok divestiture order, which passed the Senate overwhelmingly.
“I think we have to start thinking because, you know, we went on TikTok, and we got an overwhelming response with billions and billions and billions of views,” Trump told the crowd at the annual America Fest. The gathering was organized by the conservative group Turning Point.
“They brought me a chart, and it was a record, and it was beautiful to look at, and I looked at it, I said, ‘Maybe we’ll have to keep this sucker for a while,'” he said. said
Trump met with the CEO of TikTok on Monday. Trump said at a news conference the same day that he had a “hot spot” for TikTok thanks to his campaign’s success on the app.
The Justice Department has argued that Chinese control of TikTok poses a continuing threat to national security, which is supported by most US lawmakers.
TikTok says the Justice Department misrepresented the social media app’s ties to China, arguing that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored on cloud servers operated by Oracle Corp. in the United States. is protected, while content moderation decisions affect US consumers. The United States