Trump Blames Wrong Person for Trying to Cause TikTok’s Downfall
Donald Trump took aim at Joe Biden on Monday for trying to ban TikTok, conveniently forgetting how hard he worked to ban the popular app during his own presidency.
Trump posted an angry screed on TruthSocial claiming that “Crooked Joe Biden” is responsible for banning TikTok after a bill attached to a major foreign aid package passed the House of Representatives over the weekend. The bill would ban TikTok from U.S. app stores if its parent company, China-based ByteDance, doesn’t sell the platform within a year.
“He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party,” Trump wrote, urging young people to remember this on Election Day.
Either Trump’s memory is suspect, or he’s trying to pull a fast one on the public. He attempted to ban the popular video-sharing app in an executive order back in 2020, ostensibly to protect Americans’ data from the Chinese government. The ban was later shot down in court.
Just last month, however, he claimed in an incoherent TV interview that a ban would help Facebook, and even expressed support for the social media platform on TruthSocial.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump posted in March. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better.”
Since then, two possible explanations for Trump’s dramatic shift in position have emerged. One of Trump’s allies, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, revealed plans to purchase TikTok. And billionaire Jeff Yass, a powerful backer of Trump’s reelection campaign, reportedly owns a 15 percent stake in TikTok worth billions of dollars.
Over the last several months, the app, popular with younger Americans, has come under fire for allegedly being too pro-Palestinian from the right, as well as from pro-Israel Democrats. As inflated an argument as that seems, Trump may see supporting TikTok as helping his reelection efforts by encouraging more criticism of Biden’s policies in Israel and Gaza. Not to mention that keeping the app around keeps powerful allies happy.