Donald Trump is officially on TikTok , an app he once tried to ban . The former president joined the China-based social media platform on Saturday night, posting a video of himself at an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight in New Jersey. “The president is now on TikTok,” UFC CEO Dana White said into the camera while standing next to the candidate in the first video shared on Trump’s account.
“It’s my honor,” Trump said. With Kid Rock’s “American Badass” playing in the background, clips in the video show Trump in the UFC arena waving to fans as they cheered. Then, Trump said, “That was a good walk on, right?” By noon on Sunday, the video had already reached more than 33 million views, and Trump gained just shy of two million followers.
According to Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, the campaign will leave “no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” he said in a statement. While he may be embracing TikTok now, as president, Trump signed an executive order in 2020 that said “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned” by Chinese companies presented a threat to national security. TikTok sued and successfully blocked the order.
In April, Congress passed a bill Biden later signed that could effectively bar the app in the U.S. unless its owner, ByteDance , sells TikTok to an American company.
The bill came to fruition out of f.
