Former US President
Donald Trump
was among the biggest critics of
TikTok
. In 2020, he even issued an executive order stating that TikTok’s data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.” Trump has now expressed objections to banning the
ByteDance-owned
Chinese social media app.
Trump said banning TikTok in the US will help
to ‘double’ its business and that the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company is the “true enemy of the people.”
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook … will double their business,” Trump said, adding that he does not want Facebook “doing better.”
“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in [the] last election, doing better. They are a true enemy of the people,” he said, as per Axios.
TikTok Ban in the US
There have been discussions around banning the Chinese social media app in the US and recently, a key House committee voted unanimously to advance bipartisan legislation that will mandate the sale within six months or see TikTok facing a ban.
TikTok maintains that the bill is a disguised attempt at a complete ban and that their US operations are secure.
Reports have suggested that Congress members received numerous calls from TikTok users who are unhappy at plans to force its parent company to sell the social media app. The White House has indicated that President Biden would sign the bill if Congress approves it.
Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy, Indian-American entrepreneur who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, threw his weight behind Trump’s comments, saying that “bashing the China-based social media platform is easy. Understanding the actual issue is harder”. He said that “the former president was right in opposing a legislative ban”.