NEWSLETTER
President-elect Donald Trump says he wants service providers like Apple and Google to bring TikTok back online in the United States, and proposed to create a joint venture where the United States owns 50 percent of the application.
“I ask companies not to let TikTok remain in the dark!” Trump wrote on Social Truth Sunday. “I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the time period before the law's prohibitions go into effect, so we can reach an agreement to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped prevent TikTok from disappearing before my order.”
Part of the motivation appears to be his own inauguration on Monday, which Trump said “Americans deserve to see.” He called the joint venture idea an “initial thought” and said: “By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to thrive. Without US approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps trillions.”
Shortly after the ban went into effect, Republican lawmakers poured cold water on the idea that Donald Trump will be able to stop the TikTok ban without selling the app when he takes office on Monday. Trump had previously floated exercising a 90-day extension written into the law to lengthen the deadline for a sale and reportedly considered issuing an executive order.
But even Trump's Republican allies in Congress cast doubt on the idea that a pause on the ban is viable without a good-faith agreement that frees TikTok from its foreign adversary ownership, it is unlikely that service providers like Apple and Google risks paying billions in fines. could face if a court rules that Trump is wrong about his powers to stop the law.
“We will enforce the law,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press.” “When President Trump put out the Truth post and said, 'save TikTok,' the way we read it is that he's going to try to force real divestment.” Johnson added that “the only way to extend it is if there is a real deal in the works.”
“Now that the law has gone into effect, there is no legal basis for any type of 'extension' of its effective date,” Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE) say in a statement. “In order for TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law's qualified divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China.”
This story is developing.
