Trump is looking to save TikTok from potential ban, Waltz says
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Rep. Michael Waltz on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
President-elect Trump will move to "preserve" TikTok, said his pick for national security adviser, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), on Wednesday — as a potential nationwide ban looms.
The big picture: It's not immediately clear what action Trump could take if the U.S. Supreme Court were to uphold a bipartisan law that would, unless sold to a U.S. firm, ban the popular video app that's owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
- The justices seem inclined to uphold the law, which could take effect as soon as this Sunday.
Driving the news: Fox News' Bret Baier asked Waltz in an interview Wednesday about how true a Washington Post report headlined "Trump considers executive order hoping to 'save TikTok' from ban or sale in U.S. law" was.
- "If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear," Waltz said on Fox News' "Special Report."
- "Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use, and was great for his campaign in getting his message out. But, number two, he is going to protect their data," he said.
- "We're going to find a way to preserve it but protect people's data. And that's the deal that will be in front of us."
Zoom in: Waltz acknowledged there are "people out there who don't want the U.S. government seeing all their data and passwords" and "we certainly don't want the Chinese government seeing all their data and passwords."
- But he said that Trump "is a dealmaker," adding: "I don't want to get ahead of our executive orders but we're going to create the space to — to put that deal in place."
Between the lines: University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein told the Washington Post Wednesday that executive orders were "not magical documents" that would stop a ban from going into effect.
- "TikTok will still be banned, and it will still be illegal for Apple and Google to do business with them," said Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department.
- "But it will make the president's intention not to enforce the law that much more official."
State of play: President Biden signed into law a bill that passed last year requiring ByteDance to either sell TikTok to an American company or shut down operations in the U.S. by Jan. 19.
- Trump asked the Supreme Court last month to pause the TikTok ban after previously advocating for one before flip-flopping.
- During oral arguments last week, most of the justices focused on the fact that under the law, TikTok could continue operations if it used an algorithm other than ByteDance's and that as a Chinese company it doesn't have First Amendment rights, per Axios' Sam Baker.
What we're watching: Biden could push the ban's deadline by 90 days if ByteDance makes progress toward divestiture in the U.S. by Sunday, the day before Trump's inauguration.
- Rozenshtein noted on X Wednesday that the Supreme Court's website suggests it will release an order list on Tuesday, two days after the law is due to take effect.
- "So they might let the law go into effect without actually saying anything either way," he added.
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