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Donald Trump is urging the US Supreme Court to pause the incoming TikTok ban.
Instead of banning the politically controversial app, Trump wants the Supreme Court to give him the chance "to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”
The call is an about-face for the president-elect, who sought to ban the app in 2020 over national security concerns due to its ownership by Chinese company ByteDance.
Trump’s filing with the Supreme Court focuses on his experience using the platform. It claims his 14.7 million followers on TikTok allows “him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech.”
The brief goes on to claim that Trump “is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history,” and emphasizes how he used TikTok in his recent presidential campaign. In addition, he claims his experience as founder of the “resoundingly successful” social media platform Truth Social gives him “an in-depth perspective on the extraordinary government power attempted to be exercised in this case.”
Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, reported a $58 million loss last year, compared to a $50 million profit the year before, and had roughly 9 million cross-platform sign-ups as of February 2024.
The brief comes after the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on Jan. 10 about the ban on First Amendment grounds. TikTok is challenging the law that’s set to ban TikTok in the US on Jan. 19 unless it divests from its Chinese owners. The Supreme Court could be TikTok’s last chance to remain on Google Play and Apple’s App Store, which have been warned by lawmakers to prepare to remove the app from their platforms next month.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Trump was in communication with top brass at the Chinese tech firm and is thought to have met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Florida.
The president-elect first came out in support of TikTok’s case in March 2024, but not because the national security concerns he cited in 2020 had been rectified. Instead, he didn’t want TikTok’s demise to benefit Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, which he has tangled with over the years. (Meta recently donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.)
More recently, Trump said he has a "little bit of a warm spot in [his] heart" for TikTok because younger people like it so much and that demographic helped him electorally in the election.
What happens if the Supreme Court upholds the ban? As CBS News notes, Trump could ask the DOJ not to enforce the law when he returns to the White House. He could also delay its implementation by 90 days if he can prove ByteDance is progressing toward a divestiture.