During a Tuesday press briefing, President Trump indicated that he would be open to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle CEO Larry Ellison buying TikTok. The social media platform, which China’s ByteDance owns, is currently in a precarious state. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling to ban the application due to national security concerns.
The initial ruling stemmed from the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act signed by former President Biden in April. The law aims to reduce potential security risks posed by foreign control of apps like TikTok, which has ties to the Chinese government. Since TikTok failed to sell its U.S. operations by the deadline, the application went dark on Sunday for several hours. However, it resumed operations shortly after Trump publicly announced his intentions to work with the company once he assumed office.
On Monday, his first day of office, Trump signed an executive order to extend TikTok’s deadline by 75 days. However, the caveat is that ByteDance must sell half its company to the United States. TikTok’s U.S. business is valued at $50 billion. On Tuesday, Trump stated that TikTok would be “worthless” if operations in the U.S. ceased. However, if it continues to operate in the U.S., the company could grow to $1 trillion.
It comes as no surprise that Elon Musk would be one of Trump’s top picks for buying TikTok. After all, Musk was one of Trump’s most prominent financial supporters during the presidential campaign. In addition, Musk has experience managing a social media platform, as he acquired X (formerly Twitter) in 2022.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is also a choice that makes sense. He’s a long-time supporter of Trump, and his company is TikTok’s cloud infrastructure provider in the U.S.
Trump’s willingness to work to save TikTok is far from his previous stance. During his first term, he attempted to ban TikTok from operating in the U.S., but the federal government blocked him. His recent change of heart towards the platform was largely due to the wave of support he received from younger voters–who primarily used TikTok–during his 2024 campaign.
