In the middle of the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is doing an about-face. The former tenant of the White House created a TikTok account, publishing his first video on this ultra-popular social network which he had nevertheless tried to ban when he was at the head of the United States.
In a 13-second video posted Saturday evening, the Republican candidate for the November ballot is seen attending an MMA fight in Newark, New Jersey, in the northeast of the country.
Already almost three million subscribers
The former president is accompanied by the head of the mixed martial arts organization UFC, Dana White, who announces at the start of the video that “the president is now on TikTok”. “It’s an honor for me,” replied Donald Trump.
By the end of Sunday, the former president had almost three million subscribers on his @realDonaldTrump account.
Biden threatens enforcement
At the end of April, President Joe Biden signed into law a law that plans to ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company Byte Dance does not find a buyer within 12 months. TikTok and Byte Dance filed a lawsuit against the United States in early May, arguing that the law was “unconstitutional.”
In 2020, Donald Trump sought to ban TikTok by executive order, citing threats to national security in particular. The appeal brought by the application, which has 170 million users in the United States, fizzled out, with the federal courts ruling that freedom of expression was threatened.
