Why Trump’s change of heart on TikTok? This is about self-interest, not security | Emily Taylor
Why Trump’s change of heart on TikTok? This is about self-interest, not security | Emily Taylor
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The man who once declared TikTok a ‘national emergency’ has detected a very different mood among young Americans. When asked for his reasons for delaying the ban on TikTok, President Trump, a man not unfamiliar with changing his mind, said: “Because I got to use it.”.
![[Emily Taylor]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/03/27/Emily_Taylor.png?width=180&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
This is quite some change of heart. It was he who, in 2020, signed an executive order citing the “national emergency” posed by the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform. Five years later, Trump, now positioned as the saviour of TikTok, has said that he has “a warm spot” for the platform. Coached by his son Barron, Trump amassed 15 million TikTok followers and says the platform is the reason he won the youth vote by 36 points (a claim that is not substantiated).
He now claims that Microsoft, among others, is in talks to acquire the app, and that within 30 days he will have news about the future of the platform. But in the meantime, where does this leave the grave national security threat apparently posed by the platform? The arguments are plausible, but evidence is curiously scant.
Five years ago, Trump’s executive order was overturned in a legal challenge, but his anti-TikTok sentiment was doggedly continued by the Biden administration, culminating in a law that enjoyed bipartisan support. The US supreme court confirmed the ban earlier this month.
In the buildup to the law being passed, members of Congress were given a closed-door security briefing on the alleged threat posed by TikTok. The Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who received that briefing, described the evidence as “very vague … not convincing” and pointed to a “lack of substantive information” in the briefing.
