Time flies, and time changes things.
Donald Trump, the American politician, media personality, and businessman, served as the 45th President of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Among the things he have done during his presidency, was trying to ban TikTok, the popular video-sharing app controlled by a Chinese parent company. At the time, he was unsuccessful in achieving that.
This time, Trump has joined TikTok, and posting for the first time on the widely popular platform.
"It's my honor," Trump said in the video, which features Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, who declared that "the President is now on TikTok."
The video features clips from Trump's attendance at the Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Newark, New Jersey, where he was greeted by supporters after being convicted in the New York "hush money" trial on all 34 felony counts days earlier.
The move by Trump to join TikTok is in an effort to reach potential voters, especially younger ones, in order to his run-up to the November election.
"The campaign is playing on all fields," said an adviser to Trump’s campaign, granted anonymity to speak freely.
"Being able to do outreach on multiple platforms and outlets is important and this is just one of many ways we’re going to reach out to voters. TikTok skews towards a younger audience."
Trump's change of heart, is also meant to show that he opposes the TikTok legislation President Joe Biden signed.
At this time, TikTok is fighting for its existence in the courts, after Biden signed a law in April forcing its Chinese owner ByteDance to sell it within a year or face a ban on U.S. app stores.
Trump as a user on TikTok is a sign that TikTok, with its 170 million users in the U.S., is a worthy messaging tool, regardless of the controversy surrounding the app.
He said ByteDance is still a national security threat, but that a potential ban would anger young Americans and help Meta, the owner of Facebook, which suspended him from its platform for two years following the riot at the Capitol in 2021.
“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok,” Trump said earlier in 2024.
“But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media."
The app is also particularly attractive to Trump’s campaign given that there’s also a two-to-one ratio of pro-Trump versus pro-Biden content on the app, said a TikTok official who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Due to the controversies surrounding Trump, the surprise decision to create a TikTok account quickly made Trump to eclipse Biden's presence on the platform.
When Donald Trump was in office during his presidency as the 45th President of the U.S., he took issue with the social media app being controlled by a China-based parent company.
He tried banning the app with an executive order, but was unsuccessful.
His effort was eventually blocked in the federal courts.
So here, Trump in joining TikTok with his verified @realDonaldTrump handle, is a major win for the embattled app that’s fighting for its existence in Washington.
And with his presence on TikTok, Trump could draw a huge base of supporters to his Truth Social platform, where he has some 7 million followers.
Not only that, because Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has also started using the app a week before this.
He has posted from the inauguration of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, and behind the scenes from the holding room at the Manhattan courtroom where his father’s criminal case was being tried.
Some of Trump’s top former advisers and allies have been advocating for TikTok on Capitol Hill, including Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, on behalf of Club for Growth, and David Urban, a former senior Trump campaign adviser and registered lobbyist for ByteDance.
Read: Donald Trump, The First Country Leader Permanently Banned From Twitter