4 in 10 Americans in new poll back Trump on TikTok order

Four in 10 Americans support President Trump’s threat to ban the hugely popular social media video app TikTok if it is not sold to an American buyer, while slightly less say they oppose the ban, according to a new poll.

A Reuters survey released Monday found that 40 percent of U.S. adults agreed with the president’s push to either ban TikTok or force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell it to a U.S. company. Two U.S. giants, Walmart and Microsoft, are reportedly pursuing a potential joint purchase of the popular app.

Thirty percent of U.S. adults in the survey said that they opposed the president’s efforts on TikTok, while another 30 percent said they had no opinion or did not know enough about the issue.

Twenty-one percent of respondents who identified as Democrats said they supported Trump’s order, which was put on hold for 45 days in early August, according to the poll.

Just 38 percent of all respondents said that they were familiar with the app to some degree, while 25 percent said they had watched videos using it. Thirty-five percent said that they had heard about it but not used it. 

TikTok has promised a lawsuit over the president’s executive order and dismissed the administration’s claims that user data was at risk due to claims that ByteDance shares information with China’s government.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll was conducted Aug. 25-27 among 1,349 U.S. adults through online surveys, with a credibility interval of plus or minus about 3 percentage points.