WASHINGTON – Former United States (US) president Donald Trump has joined TikTok, the video-sharing app that he tried to ban while in the White House, United Press International reported.
“The president is now on TikTok,” Dana White, the chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, said in Trump’s first post.
Trump responded that it is an honour to be on the app as he attended a UFC match in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday.
Trump garnered more than 39.8 million views on the video and has already amassed more than 2.5 million followers. Biden has just 338,000 followers on the platform.
TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and came under fire by Trump as he sought to hit out at China.
In August 2020, Trump issued two executive orders prohibiting any transaction with ByteDance and WeChat’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. He sent letters to both chambers of the US Congress stating the actions were to protect the US from China.
“The spread in the US of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” Trump wrote at the time.
That same month, Trump gave Microsoft and ByteDance a deadline of that year to work out a deal to sell the company or be banned. Chinese media blasted the moves at the time as open robbery and ultimately the company was not sold off.
Still, American lawmakers with the support of the administration of President Joe Biden have passed a law that would ban TikTok if it doesn’t sell to a US company within 270 days. Biden signed the bill into law on April 24.
“For the first time in history, congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” TikTok shot back in court documents filed in a federal court of appeals.
Though Trump said earlier this year that he believes TikTok still poses a national security risk, he now views it as a check to the massive presence of Meta and its platforms Facebook and Instagram. – June 3, 2024