Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he supports TikTok, even though the app could be banned in the country if Chinese company ByteDance fails to divest itself of the app’s US assets.
“I’m all for TikTok, because you need competition. If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that, you know — that’s Zuckerberg,” Trump told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in an interview published Tuesday (16).
The former president previously considered TikTok a threat to the United States, but decided to join the platform last month. The app is used by about 170 million Americans.
Trump has previously criticized Facebook and Instagram, apps owned by Meta, for suspending him for two years following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
He told an interviewer in June that he would never support a ban on TikTok — who declined to comment.
Trump has tried to ban TikTok in the past
As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok and Chinese social media platform WeChat in 2020, but the move was blocked in U.S. courts.
In June 2021, US President Joe Biden withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban WeChat and TikTok.
In September, a U.S. appeals court will hold oral arguments on challenges to a new law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or risk banning the app in the country. The law was signed by Biden on April 24.
The White House says it is not in favor of banning TikTok, but, citing “national security” reasons, says it does not want the app used by Americans to be controlled by a Chinese company.
Joe Biden’s campaign joined TikTok in February.
Source: CNN Brasil
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