President Donald Trump said on Friday night that he would ban the popular video sharing app TikTok.
“As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington after a fundraising trip to Florida.
Trump described the action as “severance” and said he could sign an order as soon as Saturday. “Well, I have that authority,” he said.
“I can do it with an executive order or that,” Trump said, referring to emergency economic powers.
A spokesperson for TikTok said in a statement that the app is a job creator committed to the privacy of its 100 million users in the United States.
“We’ve hired nearly 1,000 people to our US team this year alone, and are proud to be hiring another 10,000 employees into great paying jobs across the US.,” the spokesperson said. “Our $1 billion creator fund supports US creators who are building livelihoods from our platform.
“TikTok US user data is stored in the US, with strict controls on employee access,” the statement continued. “TikTok’s biggest investors come from the US. We are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform.”
The American Civil Liberties Union tweeted that Trump’s plan was “a danger to free expression.”
Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical. https://t.co/ZbN7f2TOwF
— ACLU (@ACLU) August 1, 2020
The president said he didn’t support a deal involving TikTok and Microsoft. On Friday reports emerged that Microsoft was in talks to buy the app from its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
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A source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok.
TikTok is also in talks with several other companies for a possible sale, but Microsoft is the farthest along and most likely at this stage, the source said.
The deal might not be an outright sale, and ByteDance could instead sell a majority stake to an outside buyer, leaving it with a small stake, the person said.
The source confirmed that TikTok has had conversations with the White House but would not confirm if they spoke Friday.
Microsoft declined to comment.
The White House has ramped up its concerns about the popular video-sharing app in recent weeks over its ownership by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Chinese law can compel any domestic company to hand over data it has collected on users.
“We’re looking at TikTok,” Trump said earlier Friday. “We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some others things,” Trump told reporters at the White House Friday morning. “We are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok.”
While TikTok is largely seen as an app for young people, it tracks phone locations and users’ metadata, like many apps, and China has a demonstrated appetite for Americans’ personal data. TikTok has also faced repeated accusations of censoring content unappetizing to Beijing, prompting fears that the app’s popularity serves as an extension of China’s influence.
Since November, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which investigates foreign acquisitions of U.S. properties for potential national security threats, has been looking into ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, the Chinese-owned lip-syncing app it merged with TikTok.
Microsoft is in talks to purchase the app, the New York Times reported Friday. Microsoft declined comment.
Earlier this month, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, said he had been informed the eventual buyer “will be a one hundred percent American company.”
TikTok has repeatedly claimed to be an independent company, free of China’s influence or demands for rights to domestic companies’ data. But on Wednesday, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, indicated China views TikTok as a domestic company. The app is not available in mainland China.
Trump and members of his administration have repeatedly said China should be punished for its role in allowing the coronavirus to spread to the U.S. Banning TikTok could be part of that retaliation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month.
“With respect to Chinese apps on peoples’ cellphones, the United States will get this one right,” he told Fox News in early July.
TikTok declined to confirm a potential sale.
“While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok,” TikTok spokesperson Ashley Nash-Hahn said. “Hundreds of millions of people come to TikTok for entertainment and connection, including our community of creators and artists who are building livelihoods from the platform.”
In June, teens on TikTok claimed they had orchestrated a lower-than-expected turnout at Trump’s Tulsa campaign rally, after a viral effort to reserve tickets they had no intention of using in an attempt to humiliate the president with an empty arena.
Trump was said to be “furious” at the “underwhelming” crowd, NBC reported.
Josh Lederman is a national political reporter for NBC News.
