Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said this week that if TikTok ends up getting banned in the United States, young people should blame President Joe Biden.
These comments were made despite the fact that the push to ban TikTok unless it sold off to an American company started while Trump was still president.
On Monday, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to write:
“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok. He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party.”
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives approved a new bill that will ban TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance — the company based in China that owns the social media platform — sells it off to an American-based company. That bill passed with a 360-58 vote.
It stands a good chance of being approved by the Senate, and Biden has said he would sign the bill into law if it reached his desk.
While the push to ban TikTok has really just ramped up over the last year or so, the efforts actually started in August of 2020, when Trump was in the White House. Back then, Trump enacted an executive order that would’ve banned the app if ByteDance didn’t sell it off within 45 days.
The order was eventually blocked by a court, with a federal judge ruling that Trump overstepped his official powers.
In recent months, though, Trump has seemingly reversed his stance on the matter. He has claimed that if TikTok were to be banned, it would only boost the status of the platforms that are owned by Meta — including Instagram and Facebook.
Trump has been at odds with Meta ever since Facebook suspended his account not long after the attack at the U.S. Capitol building took place in January of 2021.
On Monday, Trump posted to Truth Social, writing that the effort to ban TikTok was essentially “election interference.” He wrote:
“Young people, and lots of them, must remember this on November 5th, ELECTION DAY, when they vote! They also must remember, more importantly, that he [Biden] is destroying our Country, and is A MAJOR THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!”
Even though their party leader is seemingly against the TikTok ban, many Republican legislators are in favor of it. Only 25 of the Republicans in Congress’ lower chamber voted against the bill earlier this week. Even some of Trump’s closest allies voted in favor of it, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida.
Many state-level governments have already banned the popular social media app from devices they issue to employees. This latest effort, though, is much grander.
It could result in TikTok being permanently banned from U.S. devices, unless ByteDance ends up selling off to an American company.
