President-elect Trump doubled down on his support for TikTok on Friday as the popular social media app prepares to challenge an impending ban in the Supreme Court next week.
“Why do I want to abolish TikTok?” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social, along with an image promoting the statistics of his account on TikTok.
Trump's personal account has a total of 1.4 billion views on the video-sharing app, with an average of 24 million views per post, according to statistics shared by the president-elect.
His campaign accounts have received a total of 2.4 billion views, with an average of 6 million views per post. The @teamtrump account received eight times more total views on TikTok than on Instagram.
Trump, who vowed during the campaign to “save TikTok,” asked the Supreme Court last week to delay a law that would force the app's China-based parent company ByteDance to sell, otherwise it would be delayed until January. It called for banning users from using U.S. networks and app stores starting on the 19th.
The court took up the case on short notice last month and is scheduled to hear oral arguments in TikTok's anti-sale law case on January 10th.
The president-elect has argued that the Supreme Court should delay enacting the law until after he takes office, and has suggested that he may negotiate a new agreement that would eliminate the need to consult the justices.
D. John Sauer, one of President Trump's personal appellate lawyers, said, “Only President Trump has the impeccable deal-making expertise, electoral authority, and ability to craft resolutions that uphold the platform while addressing national security concerns.” “We have the political will to negotiate a plan.” -The next president was sworn in as U.S. attorney general.
The Supreme Court agreed to take up the case in late December after a federal appeals court rejected TikTok's argument that the law violated the First Amendment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the bill passed Congress with a bipartisan majority and was signed into law by President Biden in April, but that the government's national security concerns about the app's relationship with China The decision was made that the concerns were justified.
After losing a bid to put the law on hold in the D.C. Circuit, TikTok turned to the Supreme Court, seeking a stay of the law pending appeal. Instead, the high court chose to move the case to its regular docket and hear it on an expedited schedule, allowing the justices the possibility of issuing a decision before the Jan. 19 deadline.
