TikTok’s Jan 20th “Welcome Back” to Americans, crediting President Donald Trump, raises questions about his abrupt view change since his first term.
Amidst a record-breaking 35 signed executive orders, Trump suspended former President Joe Biden’s TikTok ban for 75 days.
In his previous term, Trump justified passage of a TikTok ban with the same logic that Congress used to pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act on Jan. 19th.
There were concerns about TikTok threatening national security due to the ability for the Chinese government to access American information and use it to spy on U.S. citizens. President Trump’s concerns from his first term stem from a similar background.
“This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” said Trump.
China’s threat or alleged motive has not changed, so what has?
It can be argued that President Trump is using the controversy surrounding TikTok purely in self-interest to boost his public image and fulfill his idea of “Making America Great Again.”
President Trump’s egotistical temperament is no secret to the American public, in fact, there is rarely a public appearance in which he doesn’t utter a demeaning comment about others while praising himself in the same breath.
Because of his self-obsessive tendencies, it is fairly easy to say that his motives are not as innocent as he makes out in his executive order to suspend the ban.
Apart from fulfilling his personal fantasy of seeing a bidding war over TikTok ownership, Trump was also in need of bettering his public perception. One of the pieces to this puzzle was posing as the TikTok “champion.”
Gaining popularity with younger voters was proving difficult for Trump as the majority favored Harris in the 2024 election. So, taking credit for saving a platform that over 170 million Americans use was the perfect solution.
As TikTok is one of the main avenues of news and entertainment for younger generations, there was an uproar when it went dark in the U.S.
For Trump, this dependency meant that taking credit for TikTok’s saving was guaranteed praise and if his efforts fail, he can easily blame the Biden administration for the official ban. Either way, Trump comes out on top.
