Trump rep says the current TikTok ban reprieve will be the last, no takesies backsies

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: There’s been another twist in the tale of the U.S. TikTok ban.

Two weeks ago, this saga seemed to be sorted. President Trump announced that a deal was “pretty much” done, with a group of buyers lined up to acquire TikTok and avert a shutdown of the app’s U.S. operations. To that end, TikTok was reported to be developing an app called M2, which would operate exclusively in the U.S. and allow government regulators to oversee data collection and storage.

But if you thought this brouhaha could be resolved so simply, you haven’t been following the years-long story that has unfolded up to this point. A lot has happened since the M2 report came out, and after celebrating a rumored TikTok acquisition, the Trump White House is now hitting the app with a threat: Get a deal done, or else you won’t get another ban extension.

That ultimatum came from White House Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who discussed TikTok during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones,” Lutnick said

. He indicated that if a deal is not approved by the current September 17 deadline, “TikTok is going to go dark.”

That harsh language represents a sharp pivot from the optimistic outlook the Trump White House expressed earlier in July. Since then, two notable complications have become publicly known. Blackstone, the VC firm with more than $1 trillion of assets under its management, chose to pull out of the investment group that’s looking to acquire TikTok. On the other side of the negotiations, TikTok reps flatly denied the M2 report, claiming it to be “factually inaccurate.”

The White House has controlled the narrative surrounding the potential TikTok ban, but the repeated delays to the deal-making process and the waffling of potential suitors are reminders that Americans must also consider the Chinese perspective. Persistent rumors have suggested that authorities in Beijing are not enthused by Trump’s TikTok power play, and the latest setbacks show that a ban-averting deal may not be as close to fruition as the current administration would like you to believe.

The primary factor bringing ByteDance to the table is the potential economic hit it would take if TikTok is indeed restricted in the United States. That concern might be real enough to get a deal done, but at this point, I don’t believe a word out of anyone’s mouth regarding the status of these negotiations. We’re either going to get a deal by the fall, or this saga is going to be the latest in a growing number of TACO moments in the Trump presidency. By September 17, we’ll know which of those paths this deal is taking.