(USNewsMag.com) – Former President Donald Trump recently reversed his support for banning the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, yet issued an ominous warning about Facebook, which he said would receive a boost if TikTok is banned.
On Thursday, March 7th, Trump posted on his Truth Social page in response to the latest effort in Congress to ban TikTok, claiming that doing so would only help Mark Zuckerberg, whom he referred to as “Zuckerschmuck,” and his social media platform Facebook, owned by parent company Meta. Trump called Facebook the “true enemy” of the American people and said he doesn’t want to see the company “doing better.”
The shift represents a 180 from his previous position that TikTok should be banned because it is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance and most likely funneling the data of American users to the Chinese government. Trump tried to force ByteDance to liquidate its U.S. assets and destroy its data back in 2020 by executive order, a move that President Joe Biden reversed when he took office in 2021.
Trump appeared on CNBC and was asked by the “Squawk Box” hosts if he believed that TikTok poses a national security threat to the U.S. The former president responded that he still believes that to be the case and that the “privacy and data rights” of the American people should be protected. They then pressed him about his change of heart about banning the company. He said he could have finalized a ban during his time in the White House, but claims he left that decision up to Congress.
The former president said he could’ve “gotten it done” if he wanted to but noted how popular the app is, especially amongst the youth, many of whom he claimed would “go crazy without it.” Trump said that TikTok has “a lot of good” and “a lot of bad” yet reiterated that Facebook would only get bigger without it. He also reiterated he views Facebook as “the enemy of the people.”
Trump has had a rocky history with Zuckerberg and his platforms, which censored the Hunter Biden laptop story during the election and also banned the former president the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Facebook and Instagram have since reinstated his accounts, which Trump started using again to reach voters for his campaign.
Meanwhile, his former adviser, Steve Bannon, believes Trump may have reversed course on TikTok to please a major GOP donor with a stake in TikTok’s parent company.
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