Trump Courts Young Voters by Joining TikTok He Tried to Ban

Stephanie Lai and Michael Sin
Sun, June 2, 2024 



(Bloomberg) -- Former President Donald Trump joined TikTok, the Chinese-owned platform he tried to ban in the US, as the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee steps up efforts to reach young voters.

Fresh from being convicted in the first criminal trial of a former US president, Trump made his debut on the video-sharing app with a 13-second clip alongside Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White. “It’s my honor,” Trump said in the video, which cuts to scenes of fans cheering for him at a UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey.

Trump, who polls suggest is leading President Joe Biden among voters in most of seven key swing states, has been seeking to shift attention away from his case since last week’s verdict.

He touted a 24-hour fundraising record of almost $53 million immediately after the jury found him guilty in the New York trial and announced an initiative to recruit volunteers to canvass neighborhoods leading up to the election in November.

A New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to a porn star, a conspiracy that prosecutors said deprived voters of vital information before the 2016 presidential election. Sentencing is set for July 11.

‘Breaking Point’

Asked about the risk of facing house arrest or jail time, Trump suggested it could provoke an outcry.

“I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said in a Fox News interview broadcast Sunday. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know at a certain point there’s a breaking point.”

Lara Trump, who has been the Republican National Committee’s co-chair since March, said her father-in-law’s supporters will “remain calm and protest at the ballot box on Nov. 5.”

“So they shouldn’t do anything until voting starts, and then they’re going to come out in droves,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Before Trump started his TikTok account, his main super political action committee joined last month.

“We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement Sunday.

TikTok’s fate has become a election-year issue as its Chinese parent, ByteDance Ltd., faces a deadline to sell its stake in the company or face a ban in US app stores. TikTok is suing the US government over the law, which was backed by congressional Republicans and Biden in a bid to address concerns that the Chinese government could access user data or influence what’s seen on the app.

More than 170 million Americans have accounts on the popular platform, according to the company, including many Gen-Z and millennial voters who both Biden and Trump have been courting. Biden’s decision to sign the divest-or-ban law has drawn blowback from younger voters on the app, including some influencers who have backed his reelection bid.

Trump has criticized Biden’s decision even though he tried to force a sale of the app as president. He blamed Biden for “banning TikTok” in a post on his social media platform in April, saying he was addressing “especially the young people.”

The former president and his allies have alleged that Google and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook engaged in election interference. There’s no evidence to support those claims.

--With assistance from Akayla Gardner.

(Updates with Trump’s “breaking point” comment in eighth paragraph.)

Bloomberg Businessweek



Trump takes off on TikTok
Anthony Ha
Sun, June 2, 2024



Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now has an account on the short-form video app that he once tried to ban.

Trump’s TikTok account, which launched on Saturday night, features just one post as of publication time on Sunday morning. In the video, UFC CEO Dana White declares, “The President is now on TikTok,” then Trump chimes in to say, “It’s my honor.” The rest of the video consists largely of footage showing Trump walking among the crowd at a UFC event in Newark, New Jersey.

The video has apparently been viewed more than 31 million times, while Trump has already amassed 1.7 million followers — more than 5x the followers of the Biden-Harris account.

“Political candidate creates social media account” would not normally be big news, but the Trump campaign’s move is a reminder that even as TikTok faces an uncertain future in the United States, politicians remain eager to reach its 170 million US users. The platform could be particularly valuable for Trump, who appears to have made inroads among younger, disengaged voters — the kind of voter who might be on TikTok.

Trump’s position on TikTok has seemingly reversed — after trying to ban TikTok while he was president, he posted on Truth Social in May, “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.” (Biden recently signed a bill that will ban TikTok if its parent company ByteDance fails to sell the app within a year; TikTok is fighting the bill in court.)

While Trump’s old adviser Steve Bannon has accused the former president of flip-flopping due to the influence of billionaire Jeff Yass (who owns a major stake in TikTok), Trump has insisted that banning TikTok would only strengthen Facebook, which he describes as an “enemy of the people.”

Of course, joining TikTok and attracting over 1 million followers is still just a footnote in Trump’s big week — one where he became the first former US president to be convicted of felony crimes.

Donald Trump Does the Unexpected With First TikTok Video

Rebecca Schneid
Mon, June 3, 2024 


Former U.S. President Donald Trump has joined TikTok. His first video, posted on Saturday night, shows him arriving at a UFC 302 fight. The move to TikTok comes despite Trump's previous attempts to ban the app as President in 2020.

Trump’s first TikTok video sees him join forces with UFC CEO Dana White. Joe Rogan, podcaster and UFC color commentator, was also in attendance at the fight, and was seen shaking hands with Trump. In the opening of the TikTok clip, Trump says it’s his “honor” to be on the social media platform.

The video features a montage of crowd reactions to Trump's arrival, including a spectator taking a photo with the former President, who can be seen pointing and waving at fans. These videos are short slices, seemingly taken on a digital phone camera, with Kid Rock’s song “American Bad Ass,” playing in the background. This is the same song that Trump walked out to when he entered the arena.

Trump signs off the video clip by saying, “That was a good walk on, right?”

The former President and current Republican frontrunner for renomination’s attendance at the UFC fight between Islam Makhachev and Dustin Poirier in Newark, New Jersey, and his arrival on TikTok comes days after he was found guilty in the historic hush-money trial.

Read More: President Biden’s Campaign Is on TikTok

Trump was convicted of 34 charges related to activity around the 2016 election. He was accused of falsifying business records that showed hush-money payments to former porn actor Stormy Daniels. The guilty verdict results in the first-ever criminal conviction of a former U.S. President. Trump’s upcoming sentencing is set for July 11.

During his presidency, Trump tried to ban TikTok. He signed an executive order to ban the video platform unless it was acquired by an American company, alleging the Chinese government was using the video-sharing service to surveil millions of Americans. He said that apps owned by companies in China “threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” in the executive order.

Though the executive order never went into effect since it was shot down in federal court, Trump changed his tune earlier this year in March.

President Biden signed into law in April a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if the social media platform’s China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year. However, Trump has said there could be some utility in keeping TikTok.

Read More:Why Trump Flipped on TikTok

“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,” he told CNBC. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”

Many young voters utilize TikTok to receive their news, according to a recent Pew Research study, which found that one-third of American adults under 30 regularly scroll the app for news. According to the study, this number has grown substantially since 2020.

In the 2020 elector, a major factor contributing to President Biden’s victory over Trump was the youth vote. According to another study by the Pew Research Center, Biden voters were generally younger than Trump voters, with nearly half of Biden voters younger than 50, compared to 39% of Trump voters.
Among all U.S. adults, the study shares that the number of those who regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.