Former President Donald Trump is blaming President Joe Biden for a bill that could ban TikTok in the US. Last weekend, the bill passed the House as part of a larger foreign aid package, requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app within roughly a year or face a US ban.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump claimed that Biden is responsible for the potential ban, saying, “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.”
Trump’s opposition to the ban shifts from his previous position. In 2020, he issued an executive order seeking to force ByteDance to sell its US assets, but the order was later blocked in court.
Ban on TikTok (Credits: The Hill)
Trump claimed that Biden is pushing for the ban to help his friends at Facebook become “richer and more dominant” and to continue fighting the Republican Party. He also claimed that the ban would constitute “ELECTION INTERFERENCE” and urged young people to remember this on election day.
It’s worth noting that Trump was banned from Facebook in January 2021 following the Capitol riots, during which hundreds of his supporters attempted to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.
TikTok ban (Credits: ABC News)
In the lead-up to the attack, he spent months spreading false claims about the election on social media. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, reinstated Trump’s account last year. Before announcing his opposition to the ban, Trump met with Jeffrey Yass, a major investor in TikTok and a GOP donor.
However, Trump claimed that the meeting had nothing to do with his decision. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it will be considered alongside legislation for long-sought aid to Ukraine and Israel.
