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US President-elect Donald Trump is meeting with the CEO of TikTok as the social media giant fights plans to ban it in the US.
Trump was scheduled to meet with Shaw Tzu Chow at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported, citing sources familiar with the meeting.
The law, passed earlier this year, means TikTok will be banned unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance by January 19.
The company filed an emergency petition with the US Supreme Court asking for a stay of the ban.
The US wants TikTok sold or banned because of alleged ties between ByteDance and the Chinese state, links that TikTok and ByteDance have always denied.
The bill introducing the law says it aims to “protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by programs controlled by foreign adversaries.”
Trump opposes the ban — despite supporting the ban during his first term — in part on the grounds that it could help Facebook, which he has accused of helping to defeat him in the 2020 election.
Trump’s second term, however, will not begin until his inauguration on January 20, the day after the statutory deadline.
In its Supreme Court filing on Monday, TikTok asked for a “modest delay” in enforcing the ban to “create a breathing space” for the court to review and allow the new administration to “assess the matter.” .
He called TikTok “one of the most significant speech platforms” in the US and said the ban would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to the company and its users.
Earlier this month, the company bid to have the repealed injunction was dismissed by a federal appeals court, which found the law to be “the culmination of extensive bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents.”
At a press conference on Monday, Trump said his administration would “look at TikTok.”
“I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok because I won the youth by 34 points,” he said.
“There are those who say that TikTok has something to do with it. TikTok has made an impact.”
In November, a majority of 18- to 29-year-olds supported Trump’s Democratic challenger Kamala Harris, but there has been a significant swing among young voters toward Trump since the 2020 election.
Trump only joined TikTok in Junebut gained millions of followers on the platform over the course of the campaign.
