President-elect Trump said Monday he’s got a “soft spot” for TikTok as the app braces for a possible ban next month.
When asked if he’d step in to block the ban once he’s in office, Trump said he’d “take a look” at it, crediting part of his victory to TikTok’s influence. “TikTok has a warm place in my heart because I won youth by 34 points, and some say TikTok had something to do with that” the president-elect said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
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Trump also gave a nod to his podcast interviews with big names like Joe Rogan, saying they played a part in his success. He even mentioned that some of those sit-downs were suggested by his son, Barron, who’s now a freshman at NYU. As we previously reported, TikTok is facing a real threat of being banned from U.S. networks and app stores as soon as January 19, following a law Congress passed back in April.
That law gave TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, 270 days to sell off its U.S. operations or face the ban hammer.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court backed the law, ruling that it doesn’t violate the First Amendment, which TikTok had argued. The app tried to get the court to pause the law while it appeals to the Supreme Court, but the request was shot down on Friday.
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“As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
“The voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world will be silenced on January 19th, 2025 unless the TikTok ban is halted,” the spokesperson added.
It’s still unclear what Trump will do about TikTok. During the campaign, he opposed the divest-or-ban law and promised to “save” the app. But since the election, he hasn’t shared much on what’s next for TikTok.
“I can’t totally hate it. It was very effective,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month. “But I will say this, if you do do that, something else is going to come along and take its place, and maybe that’s not fair.”
“I’m going to try and make it so that other companies don’t become an even bigger monopoly,” he added at the time.
