In his first term, President Trump came to understand that TikTok was a creation of Bytedance, a company controlled by the Chinese government—specifically the CCP. So, in August of 2020, he signed an executive order requiring the CCP-controlled ByteDance to divest TikTok. A month later that order got blocked by a court injunction. But that was reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.

As it turned out, the executive order to restructure TikTok was unenforced until 2024, when the Israeli war against Hamas intensified and TikTok’s distinctly pro-Palestinian bias was instrumental in disrupting many college and university campuses across the U.S. Congress proposed and passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which again ordered that ByteDance divest TikTok due to alleged security concerns and pro-Palestinian bias. The bill was signed into law, and was upheld by the Supreme Court, following a lawsuit challenge from TikTok. That law set a deadline of January 19, 2025, for TikTok’s ban in the U.S. unless it divested itself from the CCP-controlled ByteDance.

The TikTok ban took another twist on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, when Trump signed an executive action that delays enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days. Some have observed that Trump thinks well of TikTok presumably because TikTok delivered a lot of youth votes on November 5.

Trump is mistaken if........

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