Could Donald Trump stop a TikTok ban in the US?
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Hi guys, this is What In The World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart. In the US, President-elect Donald Trump looks like he is changing his tune on TikTok. This is him talking about it back in 2020. We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options. And this is him this week. I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points last year.

And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that. The app is due to be banned in the US on January 19th. That is the day before Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States for a second term. So its CEO, Shouze Chu, has been to Florida to meet with Trump and see if that deadline can be extended. And today we're asking, is Trump about to stop the ban on TikTok? ♪

Let's get right into it. I'm speaking to Rhiannon Williams, a UK-based tech journalist. Hi. Hi. So what has happened with the US TikTok ban so far? This has been an ongoing process for more or less the last four and a bit years now. So TikTok is expected to be banned in the US if it doesn't separate from its Chinese parent company, which is called ByteDance. That's under a law that's due to come into force from the 19th of January next year.

This is a law that Donald Trump himself kind of started back in 2020. And now we're seeing the Biden administration's kind of after effects and TikTok desperately trying to fight that ban as best it can before that deadline in January. Why did the US want to ban TikTok in the first place?

So the White House under Joe Biden says that it wants to ban TikTok because of that Chinese ownership. They've cited national security concerns. They kind of believe that TikTok could be siphoning US data back to Beijing for propaganda and espionage purposes. So TikTok, for its part, has argued that it doesn't share US user data with the Chinese government and that it's taken control

measures to protect the privacy of its users. And it's claimed that this law that's trying to be passed at the moment is unconstitutional and that a spinoff would be completely unfeasible by this January deadline. As you said, all of this...

It was started under Trump. Joe Biden's kind of put the bricks and mortar into place. Both the Democrats and the Republicans supported it. This week, Trump has met with TikTok CEO. Tell me a bit about this meeting. Yes, the timing of this ban is particularly interesting. It's due to come into force on 19th of January. And

Donald Trump is due to take over as US president on the 20th of January. So that's why TikTok CEO is doing everything he can to oppose this ban. He's reported to have dined with Donald Trump on Monday, according to sources who've briefed sort of multiple different news organizations about that.

And Trump has previously said that he wants to save the platform. He's decided that TikTok is now a good thing and that Facebook is more of a kind of threat to democracy and to the US public. So he said during a news conference on Monday that he's now got a little bit of a warm spot for TikTok. So it's highly likely that he's going to use this platform.

very contentious political issue in America as a bit of a hot potato and ultimately as a means to make himself look like a bit of a hero. How's that going to work? How is TikTok potentially going to work for Trump and for his image? So it's an interesting one because Trump's desire to ban TikTok was kind of one of the key tenets of his first presidential tenure.

And now he's decided it's a bit more of a force for good rather than a spying tool. And that partially backdates to he joined the platform himself back in June. So that was as part of his ultimately successful presidential campaign. But in terms of whether this ban is politically motivated, I think –

And the fact that is Donald Trump using this to political means to sort of elevate himself? Yeah, I'd say that's highly probable. So there's a good chance that Donald Trump might actually want TikTok to be banned on Joe Biden's last day in office. And then Trump himself could say,

prolong the amount of time that TikTok has to divest itself essentially to find a seller. He still doesn't have the actual legal power to prevent a ban wholesale, but he could give ByteDance, the parent company, an extension to facilitate that sale. And then he might be able to blame any eventual ban therefore on President Biden, whereas Trump could be the one to sort of give it that extension. And that would make him

in comparison, look like the hero. How much power does Trump as the incoming US president actually have in this? Can he do anything he wants?

An essential part of this is trying to sort of separate what Donald Trump says and what is actually possible. So when he makes a promise to save TikTok, the law doesn't really allow him and him alone to do that. The only authority that he'll kind of be able to exercise is he could give ByteDance, a parent company, a three-month extension to facilitate that sale, something that ByteDance has insisted it doesn't want to do.

but that is Donald Trump himself cannot reverse a ban. He could offer the extension. That's kind of the limits of his own personal involvement in this. What has TikTok said about all of this and the proposed upcoming ban? So TikTok's

I've been trying to fight this ban every step of the way. Every legal sort of point it's challenged, it's tried to, is at the moment appealing to the US Supreme Court to oppose the law in order to fully ban it by January. So ByteDance, a parent company, said that more than half of the company is owned by global institutional investors, that the Chinese government does not have a direct or any kind of ownership stake in TikTok or parent company ByteDance.

And TikTok is actually banned in India. So we do know this, you know, this is an example of a successful ban, which has been in place for four years. So we know it can happen. It's just unclear that if this ban were to sort of progress in the way that it is proposed to, it's unclear how that would be fully banned in the US. Rhiannon, thank you so much for speaking to us. No problem. Thank you.

As Rhiannon said, Donald Trump joined TikTok in June. So how's it going? Is his page hot or is it a flop? Well, let's get a review from our very own Natalia Jimenez, a BBC reporter based in New York City. Hi, Natalia. Hi. So let's get Donald Trump's TikTok up.

It is the real Donald Trump. How would you rank his TikTok, his profile overall? Probably an 8 out of 10. I know that sounds pretty generous, but he was very late to join TikTok. He actually joined this past June during his campaign. And he's definitely made up for the lost time.

I mean, he has huge numbers, huge, one of Donald Trump's words, right? He's tailored the content perfectly to the platform compared to X, compared to Truth Socials. He's getting a lot of engagement and he's getting the engagement he wants. He wants young people engaged.

And he's got just that. Even if you just look at the comments, you mostly see people debating, engaging with his content. He's really proud of it. He's just recently said that he values TikTok a lot because of how much, how many votes it's gotten him. 34 points, he's just said recently. So I would rank it an 8 out of 10. I think he's made up for his absence. You mentioned Truth Social there. That's the platform that Trump founded in 2022 after claiming that bigotry

Big Tech was trying to silence him. And he was banned from X for a bit, although he is now back on the app. He's got a massive 96.2 million followers, while on TikTok, he's got 14.7 million followers. So he's not doing badly. Natalia, tell me a bit about his social media strategy. What is he doing on TikTok to try and make his content stand out on the app? Yeah, so he, again, joined pretty late.

But his first post was a 13 second video of him attending a UFC fight. It blew up instantly. We're talking 44 million views in less than a day. Now it's almost at 100 million. It was classic Trump. It was high energy. It was unexpected. There was a song playing in the background called American Bad Boys.

I will let you guys figure it out what that word was. But it was perfectly timed and it grabbed attention. It set the tone for the rest of his page. And since then, it's been about grabbing that attention from the youth. He's capitalizing on moments like this.

Him being at the UFC, him going to McDonald's and pretending like he works there, him actually creating his own little Trump dance. It's kind of a little like movement, you know, from side to side. He's capitalizing on that. All his content looks and feels shareable compared to his more traditional posts online.

on X and on true social. It's much fresher, basically. So you've got to give credit where credit's due in this case. Trump's team understands the digital landscape clearly. Have there been any moments yet, any clips or videos that have gone viral for the wrong reasons that haven't been part of his strategy and have blown up on TikTok? I think that it feels a little bit...

constructed. It feels a little bit like he is not actually running his TikTok. It's always someone else filming him. It's giving a little bit of a boomer energy. And I say boomer, I'm quoting people in the comments.

It feels as though he hasn't mastered that, like, I'm on TikTok, I'm on social media presence yet. It feels still a little bit campaign-y in that sense. I think people are excited for what's to come once he's mastered the art of TikTok. That's when it gets really interesting. Natalia, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

We have covered this ban on the podcast before. In April, we did an episode about how it could impact TikTok users like 26-year-old Chris Quazo. TikTok is my source of livelihood right now. And so that will obviously be a big personal financial blow to me if it does end up getting banned. I

I think it's disappointing that all our energy is being used to ban an app that, in my opinion, is doing a lot of good for our society, when in reality we have a lot of other problems that I think many of us wish our Congress would be devoting more of its energy and resources to solving. If you want to hear more of that episode, you can scroll back through our archive or search for How Will the US TikTok Ban Affect Me? And while you're there, you will find loads of great other stuff. Episodes like

Do social media bans work? And why does spicy food hurt so much? Our Instagram handle is at BBC What In The World. And we're also on the BBC World Service's YouTube channel. So come and watch us there. That is it for today. Thank you for listening to another episode of What In The World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart and I'll be back with another one soon. See you then. Bye. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by.

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