Donald Trump saying one thing and then doing another? In the immortal words of Phillip J. Fry, we are shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
For context, in the latest instance of the former president being the worst Gemini on the planet (apologies for those that share a star sign with the man), Trump has shockingly flip-flopped on the topic of TikTok. Social media is reeling from the fact that the potential TikTok ban has been A-OKed by Congress, with the House of Representatives approving of the bill meaning that it just needs to pass through the Senate and be signed off by President Biden, and then it’s official.
The weird thing about this entire situation? It was actually Trump who motioned an executive order to ban TikTok in the first place back in 2020, before the effort was blocked towards the tail-end of his presidency. These days, however, the tables are turned. Now many Democrats and Republicans who once opposed Trump’s ban have changed their tune. And Trump himself? He’s transformed into TikTok’s biggest fan…
Why has Donald Trump changed his mind about TikTok?
Attempting to work out the inner workings of the mind of Donald Trump is a fool’s errand — if we were to take a Star Trek-like trip into Trump’s brain, I’d imagine it would be a bit like the creepy boat ride from Willy Wonka but with 100% more mentions of Rosie O’Donnell. Even so, let’s dig into Trump’s varying position on the TikTok ban and what the reason behind the curious change might be.
“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok, but the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you’re going to make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media,” was what Trump said in his most recent comment on the app while speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, March 11. “I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country.”
You might think that Trump would be using this opportunity to gloat that he was right all along, as the current ban-in-the-making stems from findings made in 2022 that claimed TikTok owners ByteDance, a Chinese-based company, could access personal information of the app’s users. FBI director Chris Wray, among other key personnel, has labelled TikTok a massive national security risk. So why is Trump now back-tracking on his stance and instead shifting his contempt to Facebook instead?
First of all, Trump’s dislike of Mark Zuckerberg stems from the 2022 documentary Rigged: The Zuckerburg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump, which alleges that the Meta CEO is to blame for Trump’s election loss in 2020. The Washington Post notes that “three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity” claim this film instilled a heated animosity in Trump towards Zuckerberg. As well as personal grudges, though, Trump’s heel-turn may also have deeper, financial reasons.
Billionaire Jeff Yass owns a total of 15% of ByteDance through his investment company, which equates to about $40 billion, and it just so happens he’s also a major donor to the GOP and Trump’s inner circle of acolytes. As Politico reported, Kellyanne Conway — who recently reconciled with Trump — was paid by conservative organization Club for Growth (which counts Yass as its biggest donor) to advocate for TikTok in Congress. Behind closed doors, WP‘s anonymous sources claim that Conway has managed to sway Trump on the matter with some key arguments.
Conway is said to have informed Trump that TikTok has become a hub of his loyal supporters, so to shut it down would naturally be a bad move for him in the run-up to the election. Trump’s long-time advisor David Urban is believed to be another individual who’s lobbied Trump to turn his stance around on TikTok due to its “effectiveness as a campaign tool.” Despite these other reasons, however, Trump’s chief motivation for being against the ban is his fear that if ByteDance is forced to sell TikTok then Meta might swoop in and buy it. “Trump does not want Zuckerberg to ever own TikTok,” writes WP.
In short, if Donald Trump joins TikTok tomorrow and starts using Gen Z slang in his Truth Social posts then you know what’s happened.
