The Free Press
Has there ever been a more aptly named platform than TikTok?
When this all began—April 24, 2024, the day President Joe Biden signed a law ordering the Chinese company ByteDance to either sell or shut down its addictive social media app TikTok—there were 270 days to do a deal before the January 19, 2025 deadline. Plenty of time, right?
Today, with five days until that deadline, there is no deal. Why? TikTok chose to spend these past months litigating, with ByteDance insisting it could never let go of TikTok’s proprietary algorithm.
But during an oral argument on Friday, the Supreme Court—TikTok’s last hope—signaled it will likely reject the company’s claim that the government’s effort to force a sale violates freedom of speech. If the Court issues its ruling on Friday, January 17, as expected, the deadline will be just two days away.
See what I mean? Ticktock. Ticktock.
So it’s a near certainty that when Sunday arrives, TikTok will be removed from the Android and Apple app stores, and the platform will go dark. But that’s not likely to be the end of the story.
Donald Trump will be sworn in as president the following day. Though he helped start the anti-TikTok movement in 2020 during his first term, he has since reversed course and now says he supports a compromise to save TikTok. And as we’ve all learned, Trump has a way of getting what he wants.
The reason Trump wanted TikTok banned in 2020 was because of national security; ByteDance could use the platform to collect the personal data of American users and pass it on to the Chinese government.
Since then, a second objection has emerged: that TikTok is being used to feed Chinese propaganda to America’s youth. As former Republican congressman (and current Palantir executive) Mike Gallagher wrote in our pages summing up the argument: ByteDance and the CCP have decided that China’s children get spinach, and America’s get digital fentanyl.
And it’s not just anecdotal. As The Free Press recently reported, a recent study by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute documented how TikTok significantly downplays negative content about China.
So when Biden signed the law last April, both national security and youth indoctrination were cited as rationales.
Why did Trump change his mind? It might have had something to do with the fact that he has 14.8 million followers on TikTok, far more than the 8.5 million he has on his own platform, Truth Social. With his campaign account receiving 2.4 billion total views on TikTok, it also likely helped swing young people his way during the election. One of the biggest campaign contributors to the Republicans during this election cycle, Jeff Yass, owns 15 percent of ByteDance—which, for the incoming president, is the sort of fact that can be quite persuasive. And Yass also owns a stake in Truth Social. There also may be another reason, which I’ll get to in a minute.
First, though, Trump has to figure out how to go about reviving TikTok while also satisfying the national security concerns that motivated a bipartisan coalition in Congress to pass the law. It won’t be easy. He’ll likely be able to quickly get a bill passed that will allow TikTok temporary life, for 90 days maybe, giving him some breathing room as he tries to find a path forward.
Then he’ll have to get ByteDance to sit down and negotiate with a potential buyer. If this were purely about business, it wouldn’t be hard. In 2024, ByteDance generated an estimated $110 billion in revenue, with TikTok making up a fraction of that, with $7.8 billion in revenue last year. If ByteDance sold TikTok to an American buyer, it would be a significant short-term profit boost, and likely increase its already eye-popping $300 billion valuation.
But it’s not really about business. It’s about politics. Like every Chinese company, ByteDance answers to the Chinese government—which, of course, is precisely what worries the U.S. And China does not want to appear to back down in the face of a U.S. ultimatum, especially when it is accused of nefarious behavior.
Does the Chinese government really care about ByteDance as a company? Not really. But it is infuriated at the way Congress has singled out TikTok in such a high-profile way.
What are Trump’s options? He could ease his tariff threats to persuade China to loosen its grip on TikTok. Or maybe he has some other rabbit to pull out of his hat. If he were to succeed, there are a handful of potential American buyers, starting with Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who has teamed up with Kevin O’Leary, the chairman of O’Leary Ventures and a personality on Shark Tank.
The two men have been telling anyone who will listen that they want to buy TikTok. They told me that they have raised $20 billion, and don’t need the algorithm, which China has said it will never let go of. McCourt has spent the last five years building a platform that allows users to control their own data instead of letting the big social media companies monetize it. He thinks if he folded TikTok into his platform, called “Project Liberty,” it could be a model for how internet companies revolutionize their relationship with their customers. McCourt has been to Mar-a-Lago to make their case to Trump personally. O’Leary even posted on X that Trump shot a 68 on the golf course the day he visited. (Sure he did.)
Waiting in the wings is Bobby Kotick, the billionaire and former CEO of the video game company Activision Blizzard, which he sold to Microsoft in 2023 for $69 billion. He knows everyone in Silicon Valley. And he knows Trump. In 2020, he teamed up with Oracle to buy TikTok but they couldn’t make a deal. (Oracle then tried teaming up with Walmart but that fell through too.) The sense I got from talking to people who know him is that Kotick is keeping his powder dry, but might make a play for TikTok if he sees an opening.
Elon Musk? Most TikTok watchers didn’t think he was interested, especially given that, in X, he already has the social media platform he wants, and of course he’s kinda busy these days fixing the federal government in between running his five companies.
But on Monday night news broke that “Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the U.S. operations of TikTok.” The story went on to speculate—and speculate is the operative word—that X might take control of TikTok U.S. and run the two social media platforms “together.” (What exactly “together” means is unclear from the story.)
With no comments from any of the potential participants, it is hard to know how seriously the Chinese government is considering this option—or even if it has approached Musk, who of course has a significant business interest in China with its Tesla operation. Musk has said that he does not believe TikTok should be banned, but that’s a lot different from saying he wants to buy it himself.
And then there’s—well—Donald Trump himself.
Hear me out! Truth Social’s parent company is Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump owns close to 60 percent of it. The stock (symbol: DJT) has doubled in the past year, but its revenues are anemic, and unless Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s CEO, can find a way to generate more money, it will eventually collapse. But what if Trump’s media company owned TikTok, with its 170 million users and billions in revenue? If TikTok were part of Trump Media, Trump’s holdings would suddenly be worth many billions. And so would the incoming president. Don’t discount that possibility, which I heard from a very well-placed source.
Trump’s Democratic foes might scream bloody murder, but TikTok’s fans wouldn’t care, and the Republicans in Congress would go along. Monetizing the presidency is a Trump specialty. His real estate company, after all, is reported to be in talks to regain control of the posh hotel it owned during the first Trump term—a hotel that many a foreign dignitary used to curry favor with the president. What’s to prevent Trump’s media company from making an offer for TikTok? Nothing. That’s a deal the Chinese won’t be able to resist.
When it happens, just remember: You read it here first.
Ticktock. Ticktock.
