TikTok CEO Tries Sucking Up to Trump After Supreme Court Upholds Ban
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a federal law that effectively bans TikTok, the social media platform’s CEO is trying to butter up Donald Trump.
Shou Zi Chew posted a video to the platform Friday thanking the president-elect “for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.
“We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform—one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”
By specifically mentioning Trump and his fan base on the app, Chew appears to be making a last-ditch effort to save TikTok in the U.S., with the service scheduled to shut down on Sunday if the platform’s China-based company does not divest. The actual language of the law technically just requires the platform to be removed from app stores so new users can’t download it.
President Biden said Thursday that he wouldn’t enforce the ban during the last few days of his presidency, leaving its interpretation and implementation to Trump. The president-elect has said in recent months that he opposes a ban, going against his own previous position and what used to be near-universal opposition to TikTok on the right.
A ban on TikTok may not even be effective in deterring China from collecting the personal data of Americans, and conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, while voting to uphold the ban, questioned its wisdom. But right now, the app may be functionally useless by Sunday, unless it’s sold to an American owner in the eleventh hour. Perhaps Trump has his own plans for TikTok that involve its CEO pledging allegiance to him like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
