How Trump saved TikTok: Backstory of a 2-year campaign
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President Trump had just won reelection and was basking in the parade of congratulatory pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago. On this day in November 2024, an old friend and a first-time visitor were meeting privately with Trump. They wanted something, and they brought something.
- Charlie Kirk — a beloved Trump confidant who had just led a smashingly successful turnout drive among young voters — was shepherding TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. A law banning the Chinese-owned TikTok in the U.S. was scheduled to kick in the same week Trump was inaugurated. They wanted him to stall the ban and eventually kill it.
Knowing Trump responds best to visual stimuli, Kirk had coached the company to spin up four pages of infographics, "Trump on TikTok," showing his campaign's tens of billions of views on the now-threatened app.
A chart (shown above) on the first page jumped out at Trump, who had backed a TikTok ban in his first term. "I'm more popular than Taylor Swift," he crowed. Many in Trumpworld heard he quickly called Barron, his youngest son, to savor the stat.
- On Day 1 of his second term, Trump signed an executive order to punt the TikTok ban.
Why it matters: The Mar-a-Lago meeting was a pivotal victory in a campaign by several Trump insiders to overcome furious opposition to TikTok from China hawks on the Hill and in his political orbit who had national-security concerns.
These insiders helped convince Trump's campaign to launch a TikTok account in June 2024, when he was looking for ways around traditional media.
- Then the insiders patiently engineered a complex deal, which closed last month, to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to a joint venture controlled by American investors — the death of the ban.
How it happened: The campaign was born in early 2024, according to sources familiar with the internal deliberations. Tony Sayegh, a Treasury and White House official in Trump's first term, became a key man in the TikTok triumph. Sayegh was on a ski vacation when he saw President Biden declare in March 2024 that he'd sign a TikTok ban if Congress passed one.
- Sayegh — dubbed "TikTok's Trump Whisperer" by a Wall Street Journal article shortly after Trump's election — phoned a TikTok executive and suggested the very solution that eventually came to pass: If Trump won, he could sign an executive order thwarting the ban.
- "Impossible," the TikTok official said. "Can't happen."
But it did, thanks to an aggressive political and legal strategy, paired with some lucky breaks. Some TikTok executives were skittish about going all-in with Trump, but Sayegh often told the company's D.C. team that Trump was the only person who could save TikTok in America. Chew warmed to the strategy.
- The biggest U.S. investor in ByteDance, TikTok's China-based parent company, is Susquehanna International Group, where Sayegh is head of public affairs.
Jason Miller — a senior adviser to Trump during the campaign, who remains in close touch with him — told me that Trump "always recognized the power of TikTok, because he saw the impact it had with younger voters."
- "He'd say all the time: 'You guys are missing it! These young people, they love TikTok. They're on it all day long.' And he'd recount stories of Barron talking about it, and also younger people who work with him and for him."
Behind the scenes: To counter fears among some top Republicans about China's control of TikTok, Sayegh, Miller and others amped up outside allies — including Kirk, Tucker Carlson and Kellyanne Conway — to give Trump cover to take the plunge.
- Miller says Kirk "was massively, massively influential because Charlie was as MAGA as you get. This is one of the countless examples since the president entered public life where he said: 'I'm going to follow my gut, and I'm going to do this.' You also had a bit of boomer-splaining going on — people looking at TikTok purely as a public-policy decision as opposed to a lifestyle [for] younger voters."
Kirk earlier had his own issues with TikTok, which had flagged a Turning Point USA account for violating community standards. "Kirk received a call from Tony Sayegh ... who was now lobbying for a group that represented ByteDance," Robert Draper reported in a New York Times Magazine profile of Kirk, seven months before he was assassinated.
- Sayegh told Kirk: "We want to prove to you that we're for free speech." Kirk's digital team "began to meet over Zoom with TikTok officials, who described how to avoid AI-generated content moderation," Draper wrote.
MAGA Inc., the biggest Trump-aligned super PAC, led the way by joining TikTok in May 2024, three weeks before the campaign. Taylor Budowich, who headed the super PAC and later was a top White House official, met with TikTok officials in Washington and was assured there'd be no censorship. "We joined as a way to test reaction, which paved the way for POTUS to join," Budowich told me.
- Once Trump's campaign joined TikTok, the account quickly surpassed President Biden's. Senior leaders remained involved in the strategy for the app. A young staffer known as "TikTok Jack" was contracted by the campaign to shoot and edit video.
Alex Bruesewitz — who was the architect of the campaign's podcast strategy, and continues as a Trumpworld social-media guru — told us: "TikTok was an incredible platform for us to reach the youth. [Trump] is naturally cool and had the rizz and aura necessary to become an overnight TikTok star."
What's next: Heading into the next presidential election, Democrats and Republicans are racing anew to capture TikTok eyeballs. Get ready for the TikTok primary of 2028.
