President-elect Donald Trump indicated he may try to stop the ban on TikTok in the US as the deadline approaches next month.
“We’ll take a look at TikTok,” Trump said Monday in response to a reporter’s question during a speech at Mar-a-Lago.
“I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok because I won the youth category by 34 points,” the 78-year-old claimed. “There are people who say TikTok has something to do with that.”
Hours after Trump’s comments, a source familiar with DialyMail.com confirmed that the president-elect will meet with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Monday.
TikTok must act quickly to avoid being banned in the US by mid-January if no action is taken.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a law banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells its shares before January 19, 2025.
Lawmakers passed the bill amid concerns that the wildly popular social media app is a national security problem because of its collection of U.S. data.
But about 170 million Americans use the video app.
President-elect Trump said “we’ll take a look at TikTok” during his speech at Mar-a-Lago on December 16 when asked about the threatened ban on the popular video app in the US if it is not sold by China’s ByteDance threatens the deadline next month
If Trump can prevent the ban, it would mark a major reversal from 2020 when he tried to block the social media app and have it sold to an American company.
But the president-elect changed his position on allowing TikTok to remain in the US in March as he ran for a second term.
On Monday, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
While he didn’t win the youth vote outright, he made big gains with the voting bloc, which he credited to the Chinese video app and gave a shoutout to his youngest son Barron.
“Joe Rogan did that, as did some other people recommended by my son Barron,” Trump said.
‘He knew names. I said, “Who is that? Tell me, who is that?” Trump recalled.
“Dad, you’re joking. I can’t believe you don’t know,” the president-elect continued, imitating his 18-year-old son.
“And I did those interviews, and it was kind of cute if you want to know the truth, but we did them and it had an impact,” he said.
“But TikTok had an impact, and that’s why we’re investigating it,” he said.
President-elect Trump credits his 18-year-old son Barron (left) for helping build support among young voters in the 2024 elections
Congress has passed a law banning TikTok if it is not sold by its Chinese parent company. The deadline is approaching next month
Trump then declared that he had “won the youth,” claiming he had “a 35-36 point lead over the youth.”
“So I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart, I’ll be honest,” he said.
Exit polls showed that Trump has made huge gains with young people from 2020, but he did not win them over right away. He received 43 percent of the 18 to 29 percent, compared to Kamala Harris’s 54 percent.
In 2020, he received just 36 percent, compared to President Biden’s 60 percent.
Just months after Trump changed his stance on TikTok, he launched his own TikTok account in June, where he shared countless videos and clips with influencers amassing some 14 million followers and 107 million video likes.
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected an emergency effort by TikTok to temporarily block the law banning the app while it is challenged in court. The move paved the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to potentially decide his fate.
He changed his stance on TikTok in March, around the same time he met Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, who owns a stake in ByteDance. But Trump said the social media app was not discussed.
The bill banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent company divests was passed in April with bipartisan support. President Biden signed it into law shortly afterwards.