From NY Times: Trump Was Against TikTok Before He Was For It

Photo by Solen Feyissa, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Trump has waded into the debate over congress attempting to ban TikTok, reversing his previous position and leaving GOP congress critters wanting his favor scrambling.

New York Times:

On Monday, asked about suspicions that he had been “paid off” to change his view on TikTok after a meeting with a major TikTok investor, the billionaire Jeff Yass, Mr. Trump denied it. Mr. Trump reportedly praised Mr. Yass, a large donor to the Club for Growth, as “fantastic,” and the group recently had a rapprochement with him after a yearslong freeze.

Through the Club for Growth, Mr. Yass has funded a major advocacy drive in Washington to stop the banning of TikTok. He and his allies have recruited several former Trump administration officials to help with the effort — including Tony Sayegh, who was a Treasury official, and Kellyanne Conway, who was a senior counselor to the president.

In the CNBC interview, Mr. Trump said he had not discussed TikTok with Mr. Yass at their meeting.

“No, I didn’t,” Mr. Trump said, saying it had been a brief meeting with Mr. Yass and his wife. “He never mentioned TikTok.”

Mr. Trump’s criticism of the new legislation is striking because of his move to restrict the company while in office. An executive order he signed in August 2020 said that TikTok’s data collection from its users “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.” It added that TikTok could be used to spread disinformation that benefited Beijing.

“These risks are real,” the executive order said.

Mr. Trump’s administration moved to block Apple’s and Google’s app stores from carrying TikTok over concerns about the app’s Chinese ownership. But federal courts ruled repeatedly to block Mr. Trump’s TikTok ban from taking effect.