Former President Donald Trump reiterated his support for Chinese social platform TikTok being allowed to operate in the U.S. despite his previous efforts to ban it while he was still in the White House in a new interview published Tuesday.
Trump said banning TikTok would only stand to benefit Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram .
“Now [that] I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition,” Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek in the interview last month. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”
President Joe Biden signed a bill, approved by Congress, in April that gives the platform up to 12 months for TikTok to divest its Chinese ownership or face a nationwide ban. TikTok has sued the U.S. government over the bill on First Amendment grounds.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments in the case in September. Both TikTok and the U.S. Justice Department have asked for the case to be decided by Dec. 6 to allow the issue to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court if needed, according to Reuters .
The platform has long been viewed with skepticism by U.S. officials, who cite privacy and national security concerns over TikTok’s ties to China.
Trump had tried to ban the platform via executive order in 2020 but was blocked by the courts.
The GOP presidential nominee has since had a change of heart on TikTok and attacked Biden over signing the legislation. His shift seems to be, at least in part, due to lobbying efforts by some of his allies close to GOP megadonor Jeff Yass, The Washington Post reported . Yass’ Susquehanna International Group has a 15% stake in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.
Trump now has an account on the social media network with over 8.4 million followers and many of his supporters regularly use the platform. (Biden’s campaign also operates an account on the site.)
“I’m going to save TikTok,” Trump said in the latest video posted on his account last month.
Trump appears to still hold a grudge over Meta’s decision to “indefinitely” suspend his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“All of a sudden,” he said, “I went from No. 1 to having nobody.”
Meta reinstated his accounts last year “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”
“In light of his violations, he now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol,” Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, said in January 2023.
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