Will Trump be able to save Tik Tok from being banned in America? When asked if President-elect Donald Trump would lift the TikTok ban in the United States, a spokesperson said, “He will.”
The Chinese-owned video app TikTok, which is set to shut down in the US in about two and a half months, is hoping that President-elect Donald J. Trump will find a solution to fix the problem. Trump had promised to do so during the campaign this year.
Trump’s team has said that he will “fulfill” his promises, although full details are not yet available.
Caroline Levitt, a spokeswoman for Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s transition team, said in a statement, “The American people have once again elected President Trump to fulfill his promises and build trust in his people. He also said that he will do everything with great diligence in everything he does.” She further said, “He will do it.”
Trump’s support for TikTok is a departure from his 2020 stance, when he tried to ban the app in the US and force its Chinese-owned company ByteDance to sell it to American companies. According to a federal law signed in April, TikTok, which has 170 million US users, must be sold to a non-Chinese company by January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration, or it would be banned in the US.
TikTok Appeals to Trump Campaign Through Tony Seigh Will Trump be able to save Tik Tok from being
TikTok has sought to make its case to Republicans and the Trump campaign through Tony Seigh, a former Treasury official in Mr. Trump’s administration, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Seigh, who leads public affairs for Susquehanna, is considered a good friend of the Trump family and was a key part of TikTok’s decision to join the Trump campaign this summer, the sources said. Mr. Trump has built a presence on TikTok, where he now has 14.4 million followers (pop star Olivia Rodrigo has 22.8 million followers and NBC News has 5.9 million followers). Trump family members, such as Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and his granddaughter Kai Trump, have also become active on the app.
Seigh’s Strategic Role in TikTok’s US Relations
Mr. Seigh regularly joined weekly strategy calls with TikTok chief executive Shu Chiu, communications chief Xenia Mucha, and U.S. public policy chief Michael Beckerman, according to two sources. He was also part of a meeting in New York in April to discuss the app’s future, just after President Biden signed the law. Executives inside the company acknowledged that Mr. Sayegh’s advice was crucial to the company’s relationship with Mr. Trump. Mr. Sayegh declined to comment.
TikTok has also attracted Democrats. Former Democratic strategists also worked for the company, including David Plouffe, who resigned from Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, according to sources. The success of Harris’ campaign on TikTok, where the vice president garnered more than nine million followers, was widely praised.
Inside TikTok, there was little acceptance of the possibility of the company soon being banned in the US, even though it has thousands of employees here, according to four very longtime employees who spoke on condition of anonymity. Executives at times made light of a potential ban and even suggested in one meeting that it could one day be the subject of a Hollywood movie, three employees said.
Leave a Reply