Summary
- President
Trump said young Americans “owe him big” for saving TikTok. - Signed
executive order allowing TikTok’s U.S. sale to American group. - Deal
valued around $14 billion with Oracle, Michael Dell involvement.
The President claimed to have secured an agreement to sell
the U.S. arm of the Chinese-owned app to a group of American and Arabian
investors in his first TikTok post since Election Day 2024.
According to officials, the agreement would satisfy the
criteria of a legislation that Congress approved last year, which Trump has mostly
ignored for almost nine months as investors haggled over the terms of a sale.
“To all those young people of TikTok: I saved TikTok,
so you owe me big,”
Trump said Monday.
“Now you’re looking at me in the Oval Office, and
someday one of you are gonna be sitting right at this desk, and you’re gonna be
doing a great job also.”
Vice President JD Vance also made his return to the
platform, saying: “I got a little lazy last few months; was focused on the
job of being VP, not enough on TikToks. That’s about to change.
So follow along, we’ll update you on what’s going on in the
White House, business of state; we’ll update you on what’s going on
politically. Maybe some sombrero memes, here and there.”
The president’s deepfake AI videos, which House Minority
Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats have denounced
as racist, included Jeffries wearing a sombrero and sporting a cartoonishly
huge mustache.
The sell-off arrangement, which has not yet been consummated
or publicly confirmed by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, was approved
by an executive order issued by Trump last week.
Fox News tycoon Rupert Murdoch and pro-Trump billionaire
Larry Ellison are apparently engaged in the acquisition, and Trump has stated
that he wants to make TikTok’s algorithm “100 percent MAGA.”
“Thank you President Trump,”
“that’s my
president,”
and “best president ever!!!” were among the
encouraging remarks that many users wrote on Trump’s tweet.
“He’s the reason why it was getting banned in the first
place. He creates problems, and takes credit for ending the problem he created,”
said one user.
When President Donald Trump informed young Americans that
they “owe him big” for “saving” TikTok from being banned in
the United States, he had taken credit for stopping the app from being taken
off the market in America—something most young people didn’t want to see
happen.
This comment was made in a TikTok video, Trump’s first post
since the 2024 presidential election, in which he suggested his move had saved
TikTok for American users who have made the app very popular.
By telling young Americans that they “owe him
big,” Trump implied that young people should thank him for saving their
access to a regular media platform of the kind young people especially use to
form and pursue culture and to get their information.
