WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump returned to TikTok on Monday, posting for the first time since the 2024 election to tout his recent approval of a deal for the app’s Chinese parent company to spin off a U.S. version of the wildly popular video app.
Speaking from behind the Resolute Desk, the president took credit for rescuing TikTok after Congress passed legislation last year to force ByteDance, its Beijing-based owner, to sell the app or face a ban in the United States over concerns about the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s influence.
“To all of those young people of TikTok, I saved TikTok, so you owe me big,” Trump said. “And now you’re looking at me in the Oval Office, and someday one of you are going to be sitting right at this desk, and you’re going to be doing a great job also.”
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. teens say they use TikTok and 43% of Americans under 30 say they get their news from the app, according to Pew Research Center polling. Election analysts have widely attributed Trump’s increased support among young voters in 2024 to his embrace of the platform.
The bipartisan bill that forced a sale of TikTok was spearheaded by then-Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Spokane Republican who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee until she retired from Congress at the end of 2024. In a text message, she told The Spokesman-Review that the panel “worked hard to protect Americans from one tool of the Chinese Communist Party: TikTok.”
McMorris Rodgers recalled how her committee unanimously advanced the legislation to the House floor, where it passed with overwhelming majorities of both parties. She called the vote “a strong bipartisan stand at a time when Democrats and Republicans shared power.”
“I’m grateful for the Trump Administration’s continued commitment to our sovereignty and security and would implore them to ensure that the final deal keeps Americans in control of the algorithms,” the former congresswoman wrote.
Vice President JD Vance also returned to TikTok on Monday, telling viewers in a clip, “I got a little lazy the last few months, was focused on the job of being VP, not enough on TikToks. That’s about to change.”
ByteDance rejected previous efforts to spin off a U.S. version of the app, partly because the company didn’t want to hand over the proprietary algorithms that have made TikTok uniquely successful at seizing the attention of Americans. Critics say China’s government essentially vetoed the sale, suggesting that the Communist Party values the platform as a tool of political and social influence, not just a successful business.
Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 25 to give U.S. investors and China’s government an extra 120 days to finalize a sale to a group of investors he has said will include media mogul Lachlan Murdoch, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Michael Dell of Dell Technologies.