4 hours ago

Donald Trump Wants To Save TikTok. It Might Not Be So Simple.

President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to issue an executive order once he takes office on Monday to delay a federal ban on the popular social media app TikTok and give its China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer.

Trump said the order would guarantee no penalties “for any company that helped keep TikTok from going” and further suggested the U.S. government take a 50% ownership stake in the company to keep it alive.

“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.

“SAVE TIKTOK” the president-elect added in another post.

TikTok went offline in the U.S. on Saturday in response to a federal law that required the company to divest from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, because of U.S. government concerns ― which Trump once shared ― that it could pose a national security threat. The law was upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Friday.

Trump has the power under the law to give TikTok more time to divest from ByteDance ― 90 days ― if he certifies to Congress that there has been significant progress made toward a sale and that the parties have signed “binding legal agreements.”

“The law is very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ala.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) were even more adamant about TikTok’s viability, saying in a statement on Sunday that there’s “no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date.”

“For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfied the law’s qualified divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China,” the GOP senators added. “Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by communist-controlled TikTok.”

The problem for Trump is that neither TikTok nor ByteDance have shown any interest in selling despite reports of prospective buyers lining up in the U.S. They’ve steadily refused divestiture since Congress passed the law in April of last year.

A joint venture between the U.S. government and another buyer to acquire TikTok as Trump suggested on Sunday would be controversial, likely require congressional approval, and could pose First Amendment problems. It would also be another reversal for Trump and other Republicans who have lambasted Joe Biden’s administration for getting involved in social media moderation, including combatting posts on dealing with COVID-19 and election security.

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), Trump’s incoming national security advisor who was once a vocal critic of TikTok, said Sunday the new administration is committed to saving TikTok while keeping Americans safe.

“I wouldn’t want the FBI or the U.S. government monitoring every keystroke or seeing every password, nor would we want the Chinese Communist Party,” Waltz told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But we also want an app that 170 million Americans clearly really enjoy and that we were able to get our message out during the Trump campaign in a very powerful way.”