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Trump saves TikTok: That’s the story the folks at TikTok are selling us, anyway

Chris Graham
tiktok
(© chathuporn – stock.adobe.com)

TikTok ended its hours-long political stunt on Sunday, with the Chinese company’s owner, ByteDance, making itself available to U.S. users again, after voluntarily taking the app down late Saturday night.

The payoff: they’re about to get their hands on hundreds of billions of our taxpayer dollars, all so that Donald Trump can say he’s some sort of supreme deal-maker.

“We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive. It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States,” TikTok said in a statement.

Background


Funny thing here is, the push to ban the app first came from, guess who, Trump, who actually issued an executive order in 2020 prohibiting transactions between ByteDance and U.S. citizens, citing national security reasons.

ByteDance filed suit in federal court challenging the executive order, and before that suit could run its course, Joe Biden reversed the ban in an executive order that he signed in 2021.

The bipartisan Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was signed into law by Biden last year, effectively banning the app from the U.S. market unless ByteDance, whose founder and CEO, Zhang Yiming, confirmed in a 2018 letter works in close cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party, and reserved “the right to share any information” collected by the app “with Chinese authorities,” were to be sold to a company not considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.

Another ByteDance suit challenging the 2024 law made its way to the Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 9-0 in a ruling handed down on Friday affirming its constitutionality.


ICYMI


So, for those keeping score at home, Trump was the first who wanted to ban TikTok, the law that passed in 2024 had strong bipartisan support, which is to say, Republicans and Democrats were in agreement on the matter, and then Trump’s Supreme Court, just this week, affirmed the law as being kosher.

Biden, in response to the Supreme Court ruling, pledged to not take action to enforce the law, given that Trump is set to take office on Monday, a reasonable move, considering the timing.

Here’s where things got weird


tiktok
(© prima91 – stock.adobe.com)

Despite facing no pressure to act, ByteDance rendered TikTok dark to U.S. users in the 10 p.m. ET hour Saturday night, claiming, in a message posted to its Twitter account, that the Biden administration had “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans,” and that “unless the Biden administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19.”

It was clearly a political stunt on the part of ByteDance and TikTok, whose CEO, Shou Chew, was invited to Trump’s inauguration, and is expected to be seated with U.S.-based tech oligarchs at the ceremony.

Trump, who started the push to ban the app in 2020, is now being positioned as the conquering hero who saved its users from having to find something else to do with their time.

The soon-to-be-President, in a social media post, pledged to sign another executive order “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,” and signaled that he wants to use federal taxpayer dollars “to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.”

“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say (sic: he meant to write ‘say’) up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions,” Trump wrote.

That’s in case you were wondering what this stunt was really all about – it’s about us giving China hundreds of billions of dollars of our money so that they can still use their app to influence the way we think.

And here 170 million of us are, lapping it up, and asking for more.

We don’t deserve good things.

Video: All hail Trump, the TikTok savior


Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham, the king of "fringe media," a zero-time Virginia Sportswriter of the Year, and a member of zero Halls of Fame, is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].