Donald Trump has (somehow) become a staunch TikTok defender

When Donald Trump was President, he tried to ban TikTok in the United States. Four years later, he’s positioning himself in the pro-TikTok camp. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Trump defended the embattled app and said he’s “for TikTok.”

In recent months, the 45th President has repeatedly stated the rationale behind his support for TikTok. He sees the app as an important rival to platforms that once banned his official accounts. “I’m for TikTok because you need competition,” he told Bloomberg. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram.”

Trump’s endorsement of TikTok puts him at odds with his main competitor in the 2024 presidential race. The Biden Administration has passed a law that attempts to force ByteDance to divest TikTok, though both of those companies are currently challenging the statute in court.

Once upon a time, Biden was the one countering Trump’s attempt to regulate TikTok, but the political winds have since shifted. Trump is active on TikTok now, and one of his former Cabinet members — film financier Steven Mnuchin — has mulled a potential bid to acquire the app.

As recently as 2022, Republican leaders spearheaded efforts to check TikTok’s influence in the U.S. Their Democratic counterparts eventually followed suit. Two years later, as the most prominent figure on the American right walks a pro-TikTok line, the left-wing establishment seems to be leading the charge to regulate the app. (Though it should be said that some figures on the right are still entrenched in the anti-TikTok camp.)

TikTok is currently short on allies in Washington. Will Trump actually become a friend to the app, or is his pro-TikTok statement just more hot air from the king of bluster? And while we’re asking questions, how the heck did we end up in this timeline anyway?