Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (left) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Reuters
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump expressed concern on Monday about efforts to ban Chinese social media app TikTok in the United States, saying it would only enhance the capabilities of Meta’s Facebook platform.
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I think Facebook is the enemy of the people,” Trump, the former U.S. president from 2017 to 2021, said in a CNBC television interview on Monday.
Trump acknowledged his concerns about TikTok’s national security and data privacy, saying the platform has “a lot of good and a lot of bad.”
“A lot of people on TikTok love it. A lot of kids on TikTok would go crazy without it,” Trump said.
CNBC has contacted Meta for comment.
TikTok, owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, has exploded in popularity over the past few years, becoming an international sensation with its short videos.
It has also led regulators to worry that the software’s Chinese ownership means it can share private user data at the behest of the Beijing government.
Experts say ByteDance, like other Chinese companies, would be forced to reveal such information if asked. China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 requires organizations and citizens to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence work.”
In 2020, the Trump administration attempted to remove TikTok from U.S. app stores due to these concerns, but was unsuccessful. Trump subsequently ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok within 90 days. Microsoft briefly made a bid to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations, but the effort never materialized.
Now, U.S. lawmakers are once again stepping up efforts to address concerns surrounding TikTok, with separate legislation proposing either a spinoff of TikTok by ByteDance or a total ban. Current President Joe Biden has expressed national security concerns about TikTok and has said he will sign a bill banning the app if passed by Congress.
Trump recently softened his tone, saying he feared a TikTok ban would only make Facebook more powerful.
In an interview on Monday, Trump said he believed TikTok still posed a national security risk given its ownership in China, but he also turned his attention to Facebook, noting that the platform has similar issues with privacy and security.
“If China wants anything from (TikTo), they’re going to give it, so the national security risk goes up,” Trump admitted. “But when I see it, I don’t intend for Facebook to get any bigger.” Times. If you ban TikTok, Facebook and others – but primarily Facebook – will be a big beneficiary, and I think Facebook has been very busy.”
Trump added: “I think Facebook is very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”
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