White House Joins TikTok, The Social Network Trump Once Promised to Ban
The White House has launched an official TikTok account, six months after the app was supposed to be sold or banned in the United States.
“I am your voice,” President Trump says in the first video which was posted yesterday. But Trump’s official presence on the app is a turnaround since he vowed to ban TikTok back in 2020.
Reuters reports that Trump has personally softened toward the platform as he credits it with him winning the November 2024 election when he defeated Kamala Harris. However, many in Washington continue to worry that personal data belonging to US citizens could be accessed by the Chinese government.
So far the account has published five videos, the third one is a montage of Trump at his most combative, showing clips of him telling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that, “You don’t have the cards right now” and complaining to Elon Musk that “everything is a computer” while sitting in a Tesla Model S on the White House lawn.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the account’s legitimacy, saying that “the Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible.”
“President Trump’s message dominated TikTok during his presidential campaign, and we’re excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before.”
The divest or ban law was supposed to take effect the day before Trump’s inauguration on January 20 but Trump has extended the deadline three times and most recently said a group of “very wealthy people” will buy the app.
TikTok Reaction
Despite Leavitt’s insistence that Trump is popular on TikTok, the comments have so far been overwhelmingly negative.
“I thought TikTok was a national security threat? At least that’s what Trump said in August 6, 2020, executive order to ban it,” writes @jjackson5150 beneath the first video. “Now they have an official White House account.”
Others brought up the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal and offered praise for California governor Gavin Newsom.
The first video that the White House posted is a remake of a viral Snowfall edit that has been popular on TikTok. Snowfall is just the latest TV show to get a TikTok hype edit that has also included Breaking Bad and Creed. The video features moody and dramatic edits of popular shows set to a remix of a Kendrick Lamar song.
