Trump joins TikTok years after trying to ban the app

Former President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that he had joined TikTok, even as many in his party criticized the popular app and called for divestment from its China-based parent company.

Trump’s first post on the platform was a 13-second video that appeared to have been filmed at the UFC event in New Jersey he attended on Saturday. In the first scene, Trump is accompanied by UFC president Dana White, who announces: “The president is now on TikTok.”

“It’s an honor,” Trump responds as the TikTok cuts to a montage of the former president greeting fans in the arena.

“It was a good walk, right?” Trump says in the final moments of the clip.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

Saturday’s decision is a far cry from Trump’s stance just a few years ago, when he issued an executive order that would have banned TikTok in the US. The order was suspended in court.

“The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” said the executive order signed by Trump in 2020.

In March, Trump reversed course and opposed the TikTok ban, saying that banning TikTok would improve the business of competing social media apps he previously criticized, such as Facebook.

At the same time, many Republicans still firmly oppose TikTok, and Trump said he viewed the app as a threat to national security even after speaking out against the ban.

President Joe Biden signed a bill into law in April that would ban TikTok, although not immediately. The legislation began a nine-month deadline for ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban on TikTok in the U.S.

At the same time, the Biden campaign has a TikTok account and posts content regularly, and will likely continue to do so given that the potential ban would only go into effect after the election.

Trump’s decision to join TikTok comes just weeks after the super PAC supporting him, Make America Great Again Inc., joined the app.

TikTok has nearly twice as many pro-Trump posts as pro-Biden posts since November, according to the New York Times previously reportedciting the app’s internal analysis.