Trump gets to work on TikTok

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now has an account on the short video app he once tried to ban.

Trump’s TikTok account, which was launched on Saturday evening, can be seen just one message from publication time on Sunday morning. In the video, UFC CEO Dana White declares, “The president is on TikTok right now,” before Trump says, “It’s my honor.” The rest of the video consists largely of footage of Trump walking among the crowd at a UFC event in Newark, New Jersey.

The video has apparently been viewed more than 31 million times, while Trump has already amassed 1.7 million followers – more than 5x the followers of the Biden-Harris account.

“Political candidate creates social media account” wouldn’t normally be big news, but the Trump campaign’s move is a reminder that even as TikTok faces an uncertain future in the United States, politicians are eager to tap its 170 million American users want to reach. The platform could be particularly valuable to Trump, who apparently has done just that has taken hold among younger, disengaged voters – the kind of voter who might be on TikTok.

Trump’s stance on TikTok has seemingly reversed — after he tried to ban TikTok while he was president posted on Truth Social in May: “Just to be clear, especially the young people: Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.” (Biden recently signed a bill banning TikTok if parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell the app within a year; TikTok is challenging the bill in court.)

While Trump’s longtime adviser Steve Bannon has accused the former president of flip-flopping due to the influence of billionaire Jeff Yass (who has a major stake in TikTok), Trump has insisted that banning TikTok would only strengthen Facebook, which he describes as an “enemy of the people.”

Of course, joining TikTok and attracting more than 1 million followers is just a footnote in Trump’s big week — a week in which he was the first former U.S. president convicted of felony crimes.