‘If Trump “Saves” TikTok, He Will Just Be Undoing The Problem He Created’
App ban -- affecting 170 million Americans -- emerges as top issue for incoming president
Donald Trump and his allies have outlined a far-reaching, right-wing agenda once he takes office: mass deportations, efforts to roll back rights for transgender Americans, more massive tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, and more.
But, suddenly, Trump faces an entirely different matter of some urgency for tens of millions of Americans once he enters the Oval Office Monday: the US ban on the social media app TikTok, which went into effect Sunday.
Officials in Washington DC, from both parties, have been pushing for such a ban for several years, ostensibly on the basis of the connection between TikTok’s parent company and the authoritarian Chinese government.
The US Supreme Court on Friday allowed a law passed earlier this year to go into effect.
The outgoing administration of President Biden — who earlier this year signed the law setting up the TikTok ban — said Friday in a statement that they would leave solving the matter to the new Trump administration.
TikTok became unavailable on Saturday evening in the United States, just hours before a law banning the platform was expected to go into effect. Users who tried to access the app were greeted with a pop-up message on their screens saying “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”
Upwards of 170 million Americans use TikTok, including a swath who rely on the app for their livelihood in some way.
Trump was on his own social media site early Sunday with a post saying, only: “SAVE TIKTOK!”
But many on social media pointed out that TikTok wouldn’t have been banned in the first place if not for Trump getting that ball rolling in 2020 when he signed an executive order that tried to ban it the first time he was president. That executive order was overturned by the courts.
And with TikTok CEO Shou Chew expected to attend Trump’s inauguration Monday, many of those same social media users say that the entire controversy at this point is nothing but a stunt for Trump.
“The effort to ban TikTok was started by Trump in 2020. If Trump ‘saves’ TikTok, he will just be undoing the problem he created,” the popular social media account called PatriotTakes posted.
Another popular account, called SAY CHEESE! — with 1.4 million followers — posted: “Is this really the script?! Trump save [sic] TikTok & be crowned as the savior?!”
Claude Taylor, a White House staffer during the Clinton administration, posted: “TikTok will be back up tomorrow so Trump can get the credit. It’s all a pre planned stunt.”
But Trump’s Republican allies aren’t going to make solving this for the new president easy.
CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported on a statement from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark) and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb) on TikTok.
“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” Cotton and Ricketts wrote in the statement.
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