US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is open to tech billionaire Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, purchasing the Chinese-owned app TikTok.
“I would be if he wanted to buy it,” Trump told reporters when asked if he was open to Musk, world’s richest man and the head of a budget cutting initiative in the new administration, acquiring the video-sharing platform.
TikTok is grappling with a US law requiring the company to divest from its Chinese parent, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. Shortly after taking office for his second term, President Trump paused enforcement of the law, which would have made TikTok illegal in the country as of Sunday.
Trump’s executive order instructed the attorney general to delay the law’s implementation by 75 days.
In a bid to preserve TikTok’s US operations, Trump suggested a potential 50-50 partnership between “the United States” and ByteDance, though he provided no specifics on how it would work.
The TikTok ban was driven by concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to spy on Americans or influence public opinion through data collection and content manipulation.
When asked Tuesday if he had TikTok on his phone—given that it’s banned on US government devices—Trump replied, “No, but… I think I’ll get it right now.”
As the sale deadline loomed, TikTok briefly shut down late Saturday, leaving millions of users unable to access the app. However, with Oracle’s cooperation, TikTok resumed operations Sunday, crediting Trump’s intervention for the turnaround. Despite this, Apple and Google have yet to restore TikTok to their app stores, blocking new downloads and updates for existing users. Companies that violate the law still face fines of up to $5,000 per user.
Meanwhile, a report last week suggesting that Chinese officials were considering selling TikTok’s US operations to Elon Musk’s social media platform X was firmly denied by the company.
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