Former president Donald Trump joined TikTok on Saturday after opposing legislation passed earlier this year forcing the platform’s Chinese parent company to divest from it or face a ban.
Trump quickly gained over one million followers after joining the app and posting a video of himself greeting fans from the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s blockbuster event in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday evening. UFC CEO Dana White, a staunch Trump ally, appeared in Trump’s first video and announced Trump’s arrival onto the platform.
🚨 BREAKING: Trump has joined TikTok
Here is his first post: pic.twitter.com/oAEdawHBvV
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 2, 2024
The fans at UFC 302 gave Trump a loud ovation following his unprecedented conviction on 34 felony charges in Manhattan, New York for falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements to onetime fixer Michael Cohen, who paid porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Republicans and conservatives widely criticized the Trump conviction for being a partisan exercise and abuse of the justice system. Nonetheless, Trump is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, and his sentencing is set to take place days before the Republican National Convention.
The Trump administration previously tried to have TikTok banned because of parent company ByteDance’s links to the Chinese Communist Party. Those national security concerns eventually resulted in congress passing TikTok divestment legislation as part of a $95 billion foreign aid package President Joe Biden signed in April. Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed fears that TikTok could by used by the Chinese regime and other hostile actors to spread propaganda and conduct mass surveillance.
Trump changed his mind on TikTok and opposed the divestment legislation for supposedly helping Facebook after Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass, an investor with a $33 billion stake in TikTok, reportedly pushed lawmakers to oppose the TikTok bill. Trump also owns a social media platform, Truth Social, held by the Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company.
The Biden campaign’s rapid response team joined TikTok earlier this year and its account has 335,000 followers. Last month, Trump-aligned Super PAC MAGA Inc. created a TikTok account, becoming the first Trump-affiliated entity to do so.
TikTok is estimated to have 170 million daily active users and is particularly popular among Millennials and Gen Z. Both presidential candidates will be seeking to reach younger voters on TikTok as the 2024 campaign heats up.
Parent company ByteDance is fighting the TikTok divestment legislation in court after unsuccessfully fighting against the bill with a multi-million dollar lobbying blitz. The company’s lobbying efforts ultimately backfired and added to concerns that TikTok is damaging the mental health of its most active users.
ByteDance has 270 days to find a buyer for TikTok or else the platform will be banned from operating in the U.S. if the lawsuit fails.