How Donald Trump switched to defending TikTok

Trump’s growing antipathy toward Zuckerberg — as well as advocacy and lobbying from several former administration and campaign officials tied to a GOP billionaire with a big financial stake in TikTok parent company ByteDance — helps illuminate the former president’s position on the video-sharing app. Trump tried to ban TikTok when he was in office before a court blocked the effort toward the end of his presidency. But lately, he’s signaled opposition to fast-moving House legislation that targets the app. Last week, the former president argued that a TikTok ban would primarily help Zuckerberg and Meta, which also publishes short videos on several apps. He appeared to reiterate his opposition to a ban in an interview on CNBC on Monday.

“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better,” Trump said on Truth Social, his social media site, last week. The former president provided no evidence for his claim. “They are a true Enemy of the People.”

On CNBC, Trump said that he believes TikTok is a national security threat. But, he added, “You ban TikTok, Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be a big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Tuesday that Trump views Chinese ownership of TikTok as a national security threat but appreciates that millions of people like the app.

“President Trump believes Congress must take action to protect the security and privacy of American users on all social media platforms,” Cheung said.

Trump’s comments on TikTok have had immediate reverberations on Capitol Hill, where Republicans who had for years called for prohibiting the app over concerns that ByteDance might be controlled by Chinese authorities were torn between their loyalty to the former president and their prior positions.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday morning on legislation that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok within 165 days of enactment — and would prohibit the app from being used in the United States if the company didn’t comply. The Senate hasn’t yet signaled whether it will follow suit.

As president, Trump issued an executive order in 2020 that declared that TikTok threatened “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” although he backed off a ban before that fall’s election, in part because he saw the move as unpopular and likely to alienate young voters.

His reversal now is also partially the product of a lobbying campaign connected to a GOP megadonor with connections that reach into Trump’s inner circle.

The investment company of billionaire Jeff Yass owns 15 percent of ByteDance, which would amount to roughly $40 billion of the company’s $268 billion valuation. Asked by CNBC about a recent meeting he had with Yass, Trump said that the GOP donor “never mentioned TikTok” in their conversation and that Yass’s wife instead pushed for school choice reform. Yass had been a critic of Trump’s in the past.

Behind the scenes, however, Trump and his aides have spoken about TikTok to people with direct financial ties to Yass. Yass is the biggest donor to the conservative organization Club for Growth, which is currently paying former Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway to defend TikTok on Capitol Hill and which recently reconciled with Trump after a feud last year. Conway has also spoken to Trump about the importance of defending the social media app, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.

These people said Conway told Trump that the app was popular and that many of his supporters were on it — an argument echoed by other pro-TikTok allies — and that they were not being censored in their support of him.

“I made clear that it’s Trump’s supporters who are organically posting on TikTok their support for him and his reelection,” Conway said in an interview.

“For President Trump, he has made clear this is about abruptly taking away something from millions of users, many of whom are his people on TikTok, and it’s about Mark Zuckerberg,” she said.

Trump does not want Zuckerberg to ever own TikTok, she said.

Conway said she was paid to…