Seeking Youth Vote, Trump Tries to Blame Biden for TikTok Bill
(Bloomberg) -- Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump sought to blame President Joe Biden for legislation that would force the sale of social media platform TikTok, even though he attempted to ban the company himself when in office.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson included a measure in a bipartisan $95 billion foreign aid bill that passed the House on Saturday that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance Ltd., to divest its ownership stake or face a US ban a year from now. The bill is on track to become law this week.
In July of 2020, the last presidential election year, Trump launched a months-long unsuccessful effort to force the sale of the platform.
“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform Monday, seeking to dent the incumbent’s popularity with younger voters.
“He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party,” he added.
Earlier: TikTok Divest-or-Ban Bill Expected to Become US Law in Days
Trump was banned by Facebook for two years “following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6,” its owner, Meta Platforms Inc., said at the time.
TikTok is popular among younger Americans and both Biden and Trump are vying for the youth vote in the November presidential election.
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