President-elect Donald Trump clarified his stance on TikTok, writing Sunday on Truth Social that he’d like to bring it back online in the United States as soon as possible, even if there’s no deal yet for a U.S.-based company to buy the app.
“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump added.
Trump posted a few hours after TikTok went offline for U.S.-based users overnight as a bipartisan law that effectively bans it went into effect. Just hours after Trump’s post, it started coming back online for U.S. users.
The company said in a statement: “In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties for providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”
It added, “We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”
The law, signed last year, gave TikTok’s owner, the Chinese-based company ByteDance, several months to sell to a U.S.-based company or face a ban. Lawmakers said they were concerned about the threats posed to users’ privacy and national security while TikTok remained under the ownership of a Chinese company.
The law also allows the president to “grant a one-time extension of not more than 90 days” before it kicks in, which Trump told NBC News on Saturday he would “most likely” seek to do.
But the law also says the extension can be granted only “if the President certifies to Congress that … a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified” and if there is “evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced.”
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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Washington on March 23, 2023.
The law, the Supreme Court which unanimously upheld Friday, leaves the interpretation of a “qualified divestiture” up to the president. In his latest post, Trump seemed to lay out what would satisfy that definition for him.
Trump said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” and confirmed that the move would “save TikTok.” The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for clarification about whether he meant ownership should be held by a U.S.-based company or the U.S. government itself.
Even so, ByteDance has never indicated that TikTok is actually for sale and has never revealed a valuation for it. Since the company has been reluctant to sell, a 50% joint venture may be more palatable than losing 100% of the ownership of TikTok.
A qualified divestiture would give TikTok’s service providers much more peace of mind than simply an extended period of nonenforcement.
Trump’s Truth Social post Sunday also seemed to contradict what House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said earlier Sunday when he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he believed Trump’s intention “is that he’s going to try to force along a true divestiture, changing of hands, the ownership,” before TikTok is allowed back online in the United States.
“I think we will enforce the law,” he said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, echoed Johnson in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” but said he felt comfortable with a 90-day extension.
“It seems to me if you’re going to do something short of someone else purchasing TikTok and ByteDance no longer owning it, you’re going to have to have a change in the law. And if that’s what’s warranted, then I think the Congress will look at that with the leadership from President Trump,” he said.
“How that gets resolved I guess we’re open, open to different scenarios. But right now, the law is the law, and of course, you get these companies abiding by the law of it,” he added.
Also Sunday, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., Trump’s incoming national security adviser, told CNN that Trump’s intention was to communicate with the various stakeholders and “to get it back online and buy him some time to” save the app.
“This is about giving the tech companies, the app stores, the providers, the cloud storage and others the confidence that we are going to work toward some type of deal to not make this go dark. And I think that’s what you’re going to see in the upcoming 24 hours,” Waltz said.
He added: “We’re working, literally real time, working with the various tech companies to get it back online and buy [Trump] some time to, one, save it, but protect Americans’ data and protect Americans from any type of foreign interference.”
Trump initially asked the Supreme Court for extra time last month, when he filed an amicus brief in TikTok’s case against the ban.
In the brief, he urged the Supreme Court to hit pause on the ban, which went into effect one day before his inauguration, so he could work with the app to explore ways for it to stay online in the United States legally.
The court upheld the law Friday, rejecting TikTok’s challenge and Trump’s plea.
Following the court’s decision, White House Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement, “Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday.”
Still, those assurances were not initially enough for TikTok, which said late Friday that it would still comply with the ban.
Trump’s support for TikTok is an almost total reversal from his position during his first term, when he pledged to ban it.
“As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters in July 2020. “I can do it with an executive order or that.”
On Aug. 6, 2020, Trump signed an executive order seeking to ban TikTok after 45 days. The order faced legal challenges, and TikTok won an injunction against it in late September of that year. When President Joe Biden took office four months later, he reversed the executive order.
The anti-TikTok rhetoric came after months of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle sharing concerns about privacy and national security related to the app. And in December of the previous year, the Army and the Navy banned their members from using TikTok on their government-owned devices.
In 2022, House staffers and lawmakers were also barred from having TikTok on their government-issued devices. And just a few weeks before that, the Senate voted to bar all federal employees from using it on their government-owned devices.
In an interview with CNBC last March, Trump downplayed concerns about TikTok’s posing threats to national security because of its ties to China, saying U.S. social media companies posed the same risks.
“We also have that problem with other — you have that problem with Facebook and lots of other companies, too. I mean the information, they get plenty of information, and they deal with China, and they’ll do whatever China wants,” Trump said.
“You know, you look at some of our American companies, when you talk about high, highly sophisticated companies that you think are American, they’re not so American. They deal in China, and China, if China wants anything from them, they will give it. So that’s a national security risk also,” he added.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
