How Donald Trump went from backing a TikTok ban to backing off

Four years ago, President Donald Trump denounced TikTok, a Chinese-owned video sharing app, as a threat to America's national security. This month, as Trump prepares to retake the White House, he called it a "unique medium for freedom of expression."

The comment was part of a brief he filed to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the justices to pause a ban on TikTok set to take effect next month so that he could "negotiate a resolution" to save the platform.

A law passed with wide bipartisan support and signed by President Joe Biden in April calls for ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company or face a ban in the United States because of its risk to national security and free speech. The justices are considering the company's challenge to that law.

TikTok has said the law violates the First Amendment. It also says that its corporate parent is majority-owned by global investors.

The Biden administration and members of Congress argue that the platform's Chinese ownership compromises US security because of the vast amount of user tracking and data collection it performs, and because of the risk that Beijing could use the app to spread propaganda.

That was Trump's position, too, before he became a political star on TikTok, where he now has more than 14.7 million followers.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist, noted that Trump's U-turn puts him at odds with many Republicans who remain worried about China's ownership of the app.

"It is hard to believe that Trump's TikTok flip-flop is about anything much more than the influence of a billionaire donor and Trump's reluctance to give up his access to his followers on the platform," Garin said, referring to Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor who owns a significant share of ByteDance. "As with nearly everything Trump does, his change of position is driven by self-interest, not principle or the national interest."

Here's a look at Trump's evolution on TikTok.

In 2020, he said, "We're banning them."

Initially, Trump's animosity toward TikTok stemmed largely from his anger at China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

In July 2020, he told Bloomberg News in a television interview that his administration was considering a ban because "what happened with China with this virus, what they've done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful."

Aboard Air Force One a few days later, he told reporters, "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States."

On Aug. 6, he effectively did just that, issuing an executive order directing ByteDance to divest its US interests or face broad sanctions.

It warned that TikTok's vast data collection "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information -- potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage."

"The risks are real," the order said.

The next month, Trump blessed a deal that involved two major U.S. firms -- Oracle and Walmart -- taking significant stakes in TikTok. But that deal, which left murky how much ByteDance and Chinese staff would remain involved with the app, was shelved amid the transition to a new presidential administration.

Trump's effort to ban TikTok was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled that he had exceeded his authority. Biden then revoked Trump's ban in 2021 as Congress considered new legislation.

In 2024, he warned young people 'will go crazy without it.'

Fast-forward to the 2024 presidential campaign.

In March, Trump suddenly declared a change in his stance on TikTok, condemning a bipartisan majority in Congress for pushing a bill that effectively did what he had tried to do four years earlier: ban the app unless its Chinese owner sells it.

That change of position came around the same time that Trump met with Yass.

Trump has said they did not discuss the company. But Yass helped found the trading firm Susquehanna International Group and one of the biggest supporters of the anti-tax lobbying group Club for Growth, which hired Kellyanne Conway, a former senior counselor to Trump, to lobby for TikTok in Washington.

Trump told CNBC in March that he still considered TikTok a national security threat but that young people "will go crazy without it." He also said moves against TikTok would benefit Facebook, which he called an "enemy of the people."

Trump went on to use TikTok with great success during the campaign and has said that it was a key vehicle for reaching young people this year. His youngest son, Barron Trump, also encouraged him to lean into the platform to win over young voters, according to two sources familiar with their interactions, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In September, Donald Trump posted a video on his social media site, Truth Social, and boasted that he was setting records on the app.

"I'm now a big star on TikTok," he said. "We're not doing anything with TikTok, but the other side's going to close it up. So if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump. If you don't care about TikTok -- and other things like safety, security and prosperity -- then you can vote for a Marxist who's going to destroy our country."

Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation, a Washington-based think tank, said Trump had taken advantage of TikTok in a way that other Republican lawmakers had not.

"If it sticks around, Republicans have to figure out how to campaign with it and reach voters," Wilson said. "Donald Trump has certainly created a permission structure to do that."

This month, he said a ban sets a 'dangerous' precedent.

With Trump's brief to the Supreme Court, his position on TikTok has come full circle, and he is now casting himself as the platform's savior.

"President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture," the brief said, "and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office."

Trump met with executives of TikTok on Dec 16 at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, according to an official familiar with the matter. The meeting came on the same day the company asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block the law imposing the Jan. 19 deadline. Around the time of that meeting, TikTok officials told people in Trump's orbit, and possibly the president-elect himself, that Trump should be the one to decide TikTok's fate, according to two people with knowledge of the contacts between the two sides, who spoke on condition of anonymity. After the meeting, Trump told reporters he had a "warm spot" for TikTok and that he would look into the issue.

The company did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Although Trump did not take a position on the legal arguments for and against the law in the brief filed Friday, he called the First Amendment implications of banning TikTok "sweeping and troubling."

The brief also warned about setting a "dangerous global precedent" on government censorship "by exercising the extraordinary power to shut down an entire social-media platform based, in large part, on concerns about disfavored speech on that platform."

Trump takes office Jan 20, a day after the law stipulates that TikTok will be banned in the United States unless it is sold. The Supreme Court will hear arguments at a special session Jan 10.