US President Donald Trump has said that he is open to the idea of Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison buying Chinese social media app TikTok. Notably, TikTok had went offline for around 14 hours from late Saturday evening till Sunday morning, but an executive order signed by Trump on his first day 47th US President gave the app a lifeline for another 75 days.
Asked if he would be open to Elon Musk buying TikTok, Trump said, “I would be, if he wanted to buy it,”
“I met with the owners of Tiktok, the big owners, it’s worthless if it doesn’t get a permit…It’s worth like a trillion dollars. So what I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, ‘buy it and give half to the United States of America, and we’ll give you the permit, and they’ll have a great partner.” Trump added.
On the potential deal Trump stated, “I have the right to make a deal,.. So what I’m thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States of America, half, and we’ll give you the permit, and they’ll have a great partner.”
But, why did Donald Trump save TikTok?
Notably, TikTok was banned under a US federal law which mandated to cut ties with Chinese parent ByteDance by 19 January or be banned in the US.
While Trump had sought to ban TikTok over privacy and national security concerns in 2020, the new US President has had a change of heart, especially in the last year. Trump says he has grown to have a ‘warm spot’ for TikTok because it helped him connect with the youth voters during the 2024 elections.
“And we went on TikTok and Republicans have never won the young vote, the youth vote, they win a lot of votes but they’ve never won the youth vote — we won the youth vote by 36 points,” he said. “So, I like TikTok.” Trump stated
