Trump Says It Could Be Worth Keeping TikTok
President-elect Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that he was open to letting TikTok continue operating in the U.S. for the time being.
He mentioned that the platform had helped him gain billions of views during his presidential campaign.
Before a crowd of conservative supporters in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump made some of his strongest remarks yet, signaling his opposition to the potential removal of TikTok from the U.S. market.
In April, the U.S. Senate passed legislation that requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell the app, citing national security concerns.
The company has fought the law, with TikTok’s owners pushing to have it overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case.
If the court rules against ByteDance and no divestment happens, the app could face a ban in the United States by January 19, just one day before Trump’s inauguration.
It remains unclear how Trump would reverse the Senate’s overwhelming vote to divest TikTok.
“We really need to think about this because, you know, we went on TikTok and got an amazing response, billions and billions of views,” Trump said to the crowd at AmericaFest, an annual event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point.
“They brought me a chart, and it was like a record—so beautiful to see. As I looked at it, I thought, ‘Maybe we should keep this thing around for a bit longer,'” he said.
Trump met with TikTok’s CEO on Monday. Later that day, he shared with the press that he had a “soft spot” for TikTok, attributing some of his campaign’s success to the platform.
The Justice Department has argued that Chinese control over TikTok poses a continued threat to national security, a stance supported by most U.S. lawmakers.
In response, TikTok maintains that the Justice Department has misrepresented its connections to China, stating that user data and content recommendations are stored on U.S. cloud servers operated by Oracle Corp, and that decisions about content moderation for U.S. users are made within the U.S.