TikTok<\/a>?\u201d read a caption on the account\u2019s first post, a 27-second clip, on the popular video-sharing app.<\/p>\nThe account had about 4,500 followers an hour after posting the video. Trump\u2019s personal account on TikTok meanwhile has 15.1 million followers, though his last post was on 5 November 2024 \u2013 election day.<\/p>\n
Trump has a soft spot for the popular app, crediting it with helping him gain support among young voters when he defeated\u00a0Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, in the November 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe\u00a0Trump administration\u00a0is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible,\u201d Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said as the account went live.<\/p>\n
A federal law requiring TikTok\u2019s sale or a ban on national security grounds was due to take effect the day before Trump\u2019s inauguration on 20 January.<\/p>\n
But the Republican president, whose 2024 election campaign relied heavily on social media and who has said he is fond of TikTok, put the ban on pause.<\/p>\n
TikTok is a tremendously popular social media app with 170 million users in the US. ByteDance, TikTok\u2019s parent company, said in April that it had been in discussion with the US government regarding a solution for the app. It added that any agreement \u201cwill be subject to approval under Chinese law\u201d.<\/p>\n
In mid-June, Trump\u00a0for the third time\u00a0extended the deadline for the popular video-sharing app by another 90 days to find a non-Chinese buyer or be banned in the United States.<\/p>\n
That extension is due to expire in mid-September.<\/p>\n
The idea of banning TikTok\u00a0originated with Trump\u00a0in 2020, who said the Chinese-owned app posed a danger to national security. It quickly became a bipartisan issue and Congress overwhelmingly voted to ban the app last year, which faced a legal challenge but was ultimately affirmed by the supreme court. The original deadline for the TikTok ban was 19 January.<\/p>\n
Trump switched his stance on TikTok after joining the app while campaigning for president last year, amassing nearly 15 million followers and hosting the TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, at Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Chew also attended Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n
While Trump had long supported a ban or divestment, he reversed his position and vowed to defend the platform \u2013 which boasts almost 2 billion global users \u2013 after coming to believe it helped him win young voters\u2019 support in the November election.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s official account on X, formerly Twitter, has 108.5 million followers \u2013 though his favored social media outlet is Truth Social, which he owns, where he has 10.6 million followers.<\/p>\n
The official White House accounts on X and Instagram have 2.4 million and 9.3 million followers, respectively.<\/p>\n
Dara Kerr contributed reporting<\/p>\n
This article was amended on 20 August 2025. An earlier version said that Donald Trump\u2019s personal TikTok account had 101.1 million followers. In fact, that is the number of likes his account has and he has 15.1 million followers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US president was concerned over app\u2019s Chinese ownership, but has softened after believing it won him 2024 election…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tiktok","tag-donald-trump","cs-entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssstt.app\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}