Trump claims he’ll ‘save’ TikTok - despite trying to get it banned while in office

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Donald Trump has claimed he would “save TikTok in America,” a far cry from the days of 2020 when he sought to ban the social media platform via an executive order.

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote Trump,” the former president said in a video posted to his own Truth Social platform on Wednesday. “The other side is closing it up. But I’m now a big star on TikTok...We’re not doing anything  with TikTok, but the other side is going to close it up.”

The message appears to refer to the Biden administration signing a bill in April that would force the parent company of the popular app to sell TikTok or face a ban in the US.

Trump’s message may be an attempt to win support from crucial youth voters, and it certainly represents a dramatic change from his past stance on the app.

In July 2020, he told reporters, “We’re banning them from the United States,” and later sought to do so via executive order, though TikTok later overturned the ban in court.

Since then federal officials have warned TikTok could share U.S. user data with the Chinese government, which the company denies, and bipartisan support has grown for a TikTok ban. The service is already banned from government devices used by the Army and Navy.

In June of 2024, however, Trump joined TikTok, arguing that ignoring the platform would empower Facebook, a service he continues to tie to his claims about the 2020 election.

“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this year, offering zero evidence of the alleged “cheating.” “They are a true Enemy of the People.”

“We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told The Independent in June.

Trump’s support for TikTok comes as the parent company of his own social media service, Truth Social, on Wednesday experienced its lowest stock price ever since going public earlier this year.

Americans remain unsupportive of a TikTok ban, with a recent Pew Research poll showing only 32 percent are in favor of a ban, down from 50 percent last March.

Challenges to the TikTok ban law are working their way through US courts.