President-elect Donald Trump is urging the Supreme Court to delay a TikTok ban set to go into effect on Jan. 19, just one day before Trump’s inauguration.
In a Friday legal brief, Trump asked the court to delay any potential ban of TikTok in order for his administration to pursue a “negotiated resolution.” The ban of the social media platform stems from a law that would require a ban or for the platform’s parent company, China-owned ByteDance, to divest from the company.
President Trump alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the legal brief from Trump’s team reads.
The brief also referred to the incoming president as one of the most powerful, prolific and influential users of social media in history, noting he has nearly 15 million followers on TikTok.
Trump’s legal brief follows him recently meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago recently.
While Trump is pursuing a pause, President Joe Biden’s administration is continuing to raise flags about TikTok’s threat to “national security” due to its data collection and the platform’s connection to China.
“TikTok collects vast swaths of data about tens of millions of Americans, which the PRC could use for espionage or blackmail. And the PRC could covertly manipulate the platform to advance its geopolitical interests and harm the United States—by, for example, sowing discord and disinformation during a crisis,” the administration wrote to the Supreme Court.
While Trump did once support a TikTok ban, he’s become more reluctant to the idea recently, talking up his campaign’s success on the platform.
“They brought me a chart, and it was a record, and it was so beautiful to see, and as I looked at it, I said, ‘Maybe we gotta keep this sucker around for a little while,’” Trump said at a recent Turning Point USA event in Arizona.
His resistance to this new ban puts him at odds with his former vice president, Mike Pence. Advancing American Freedom, a conservative advocacy group founded by Pence, also filed a legal brief this week with the Supreme Court calling TikTok “digital fentanyl.”
“TikTok is digital fentanyl, a 21st-century technological weapon being used by the Chinese Communist Party to target the American people,” the group’s statement reads.
More than 170 million Americans use TikTok. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the potential ban on Jan. 10.
