Trump seeks to blame Biden for potential TikTok ban

Former President Trump is casting blame on President Biden for legislation that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S., after the bill cleared the House last weekend as part of a larger foreign aid package.

“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Monday.

Trump’s opposition to a potential TikTok ban represents a significant shift from the position he held while he was in office. The former president issued an executive order in 2020 seeking to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. assets, though the order was later blocked in court.

The TikTok bill, which now heads to the Senate alongside legislation for long-sought aid to Ukraine and Israel, would require ByteDance to sell the app within roughly a year or face a U.S. ban.

While Biden has signaled support for the measure, Trump has come out against the potential TikTok ban, claiming it would benefit Facebook.  

“[Biden] 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,” Trump said Monday. 

“It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” he continued. “Young people, and lots of others, must remember this on November 5th, ELECTION DAY, when they vote! They also must remember, more importantly, that he is destroying our Country, and is A MAJOR THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!”

Facebook banned Trump in January 2021 in the wake of the Capitol riots, during which hundreds of his supporters attempted to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. The former president spent months spreading false claims about the election on social media in the lead-up to the attack on the Capitol.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, reinstated Trump’s account last year. Trump also met with Jeffrey Yass, a major investor in TikTok and a GOP donor, before announcing his opposition to the ban, but said the summit had nothing to do with his decision.