Former President Trump is blaming President Biden for legislation that could potentially ban TikTok in the US, after the bill passed the House last weekend as part of a larger foreign aid package.
“Just so everyone knows, especially young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday.
Trump’s opposition to a potential TikTok ban represents a significant shift from the position he held while in office. The former president issued an executive order in 2020 seeking to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. assets, although the order was later blocked in court.
The TikTok bill, which now heads to the Senate along with legislation for long-awaited aid to Ukraine and Israel, would require ByteDance to sell the app within about a year or face a U.S. ban.
While Biden has signaled support for the measure, Trump has spoken out against the potential TikTok ban, claiming it would benefit Facebook.
“[Biden] It’s whoever is pushing for closure, and doing it to help their Facebook friends become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, against the Republican Party,” Trump said on Monday.
“It’s called ELECTORAL INTERFERENCE!” He continued. “Young people, and many others, should remember this on November 5th, ELECTION DAY, when they vote! They must also remember, more importantly, that he is destroying our country and is A MAJOR THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!”
Facebook banned Trump in January 2021 following the Capitol riots, during which hundreds of his supporters tried to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. The former president spent months spreading false claims about the election on social media before the attack on the Capitol.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, reinstated Trump’s account last year. Trump also met with Jeffrey Yass, a major TikTok investor and Republican Party donor, before announcing his opposition to the ban, but said the summit had nothing to do with his decision.
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