Donald Trump joins video-sharing app he tried to ban as US president
Former US president says he was "honoured" as he joined popular app that he considered a security threat
June 03, 2024
Former Donald Trump has joined the popular video-sharing app TikTok as he posted from an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) match.
His first TikTok post came two days after became the first former president and presidential nominee in US history to be found guilty on felony charges, CNN reported.
"It’s an honour," Trump said in the TikTok video, in which he can be seen with UFC chairman Dana White before waving to fans and posing for sefies at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night.
The next day, Trump, 77, had garnered over 1.1 million followers on the platform with more than one million likes and 24 million views on his post.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said their move to TikTok "represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content".
In April, President Joe Biden signed a legislation that could ban TikTok in the US, despite his campaign joining the platform in February.
The legislation gives ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress or else TikTok will be banned.
As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok through an executive order that said "the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned" by Chinese companies was a national security threat. The courts blocked the action after TikTok sued.
However, while Trump still believes TikTok posed a national security risk, he opposes banning it because that would help its rival, Facebook, which he continues to criticize over his 2020 election loss to Biden.
"Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it," Trump told CNBC.
