During an exclusive interview with Fox News Channel’s "MediaBuzz" on Sunday, former President Trump warned that U.S. lawmakers shouldn’t ban TikTok because it would benefit Facebook, which he called a "worse" social media platform.
Host Howard Kurtz prompted Trump, asking him why he apparently shifted his stance from supporting a ban of TikTok during his presidency to now disagreeing with the 197 Republicans who recently passed a bill to ban the app if its Chinese owners don’t sell it.
Trump replied, saying that he previously "gave the option of banning it" to the U.S. government, but noted, "I didn’t do any jawboning. I didn’t do anything."
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"I just said, ‘You guys want it banned, if you want.’ And Congress probably didn’t want it banned, you know, etc. It wasn’t something that I was demanding," he said, adding, "If I demanded it, I think I would have gotten it."
The former president committed to signing an executive order to ban the app in 2020, telling reporters at the time, "As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States. I have that authority... It’s going to be signed tomorrow."
Shortly after, two federal judges blocked Trump’s executive order.
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Ahead of Congress’ vote on the recent TikTok ban, Trump expressed his disagreement with it, signaling a shift from his earlier position. He posted to Truth Social on Wednesday, writing, "If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!"
Trump told Kurtz about his current perspective on the Chinese-owned platform, stating, "There’s a danger to banning it with, you know, freedom of speech – there’s many different problems."
"But here’s what I did find," he continued, "I found Facebook to be extremely dishonest, and what would happen is, if you banned TikTok, if you take it away… those people are going to go into Facebook. And Facebook, in my opinion, is worse than TikTok by a lot."
Kurtz followed up by asking whether Trump’s new stance was influenced by a recent meeting he had with billionaire TikTok investor Jeff Yass.
The former president denied it was a factor, stating, "No, no, no. Actually, I didn’t even know that." He added that he never talked to Yass about the platform, before addressing Facebook once more.
"If you’re gonna do it to TikTok, do it to Facebook. And what you can do is let them sell TikTok. Let them sell it in the market… But take it away from China control."
Trump then expressed his belief that China "controls Facebook" as well. "They have tremendous power in that company. There’s no question about that. They want to be in China, they want to go to China."
Following the interview, Kurtz clarified to viewers that Facebook "isn’t allowed to operate in China."
