US president-elect Donald Trump indicated on Sunday that he favoured allowing TikTok to keep operating in the United States for at least a little while, saying he had received billions of views on the social media platform during his presidential campaign.
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Trump’s comments before a crowd of conservative supporters in Phoenix, Arizona, were one of the strongest signals yet that he opposes a potential exit of TikTok from the US market.
The US Senate passed a law in April requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest the app, citing national security concerns.
TikTok’s owners have sought to have the law struck down, and the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. But if the court does not rule in ByteDance’s favour and no divestment happens, the app could be effectively banned in the United States on January 19, one day before Trump takes office.
It is unclear how Trump would go about undoing the TikTok divestiture order, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate.
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“I think we’re going to have to start thinking because, you know, we did go on TikTok, and we had a great response with billions of views, billions and billions of views,” Trump told the crowd at AmericaFest, an annual gathering organised by conservative group Turning Point.