Former Donald Trump joined the popular video-sharing app TikTok while posting from an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bout.
His first TikTok post came two days after he became the first former president and presidential candidate in U.S. history to be convicted of serious crimes. cnn reported.
“It's an honor,” Trump said in the TikTok video, in which he can be seen with UFC President Dana White before greeting fans and posing for friends at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey. , Saturday night.
By the next day, Trump, 77, had gained more than 1.1 million followers on the platform with more than one million likes and 24 million views on his post.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said his move to TikTok “represents continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content.”
In April, President Joe Biden signed legislation that could ban TikTok in the United States, even though his campaign joined the platform in February.
The legislation gives ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress or TikTok will be banned.
As president, Trump attempted to ban TikTok with an executive order that said “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned” by Chinese companies was a national security threat. Courts blocked the action after TikTok filed a lawsuit.
However, while Trump still believes TikTok poses a national security risk, he opposes banning it because it would help his rival, Facebook, which he continues to criticize for his 2020 election loss to Biden.
“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok who love it. There are a lot of little kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump said. CNBC.
