President-elect Donald Trump recently asked the US Supreme Court to delay the law that would ban TikTok, the social media platform owned by the China-based company, ByteDance, from operating in the country. He requested that the law be delayed until after his inauguration, as he wishes to find a solution “through political means.”
As a quick primer, the law which was signed in by outgoing President Joe Biden is set to take effect on 19 January 2025, a day before Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s team said the timing of the ban as unfortunate and argued that the incoming president should be allowed more time to at least try and work out a deal with TikTok.
For those who have been following the debacle, Trump’s current stance on the social media platform’s situation is an about-face from when he first took office. In his first year as President, he pushed to have the ByteDance-owned platform to be banned, as well as ordering the company to sell and divest its US portion of the business to circumvent the ban. Microsoft was, at the time, a potential suitor but never followed through with its bid.
It was also reported at the time that Trump had spoken to the US Treasury Department about receiving a potential cut from the sale of TikTok, had a deal gone through during his tenure. Fortunately, that didn’t happen on a multitude of legal grounds, one of which being the ethics of a sitting president receiving kickbacks.
One possible reason as to why the man has had a change of heart with TikTok may be related to his contempt for Facebook – he openly expressed his disdain for the social network, considering Facebook to be “an enemy of the people, along with a lot of media”. This is likely due to the platform banning him after the insurrection of 6 January 2021, when he instigated a violent mob to storm the US Capitol, after he refused to concede the election results.
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