"I’m for TikTok because you need competition. If you don’t have
TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram," Trump told Bloomberg
BusinessWeek in an interview posted Tuesday. Trump previously
called TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans, a threat
but then joined TikTok last month.
Trump, who has criticized Meta Platforms-owned Facebook and
Instagram for suspending him for two years in the wake of the
deadly Capitol Hill riot on Jan. 6, 2021, told an interviewer in
June he would never support a TikTok ban.
TikTok declined to comment. As president, Trump tried to ban
TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat in 2020 but the move was blocked
by the courts. In June 2021, President Joe Biden withdrew a
series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban WeChat
and TikTok.
Trump holds a majority stake in social media company Trump Media
and Technology Group that operates rival network Truth Social.
Trump Media has a $7 billion market cap despite quarterly
revenue of around $770,000 - comparable to two U.S. Starbucks
shops.
In September, a U.S. appeals court will hold oral arguments on
legal challenges to a new law requiring China-based ByteDance to
divest TikTok's U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
The hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia will put the fate of TikTok in the middle of the final
weeks of the 2024 presidential election.
Signed by Biden on April 24, the law gives ByteDance until Jan.
19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House says it wants
to see Chinese-based ownership ended on national security
grounds, but not a ban on TikTok. Biden's campaign joined TikTok
in February.
Driven by worries among U.S. lawmakers that China could access
data on Americans or spy on them with the app, the measure was
passed overwhelmingly in Congress in April just weeks after
being introduced.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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