In a bid to widen his appeal among young Americans ahead of this year’s presidential election, Donald Trump has joined TikTok.
His decision to join the Chinese-owned social media app—no doubt part-prompted by last week’s guilty verdict on counts of forging business records—has made headlines across the world and gained him millions more online (and most likely mainly young) followers.
Almost all mainstream newspapers covering the story have headlined on Trump’s past criticism of the app, primarily used by young people sharing short videos set to music, which he once tried to ban (but was unsuccessful). Trump did sign a presidential executive order (later blocked) attempting to ban the app over its China links. That was four years ago. He has since argued that scrapping TikTok would hand too much power to Facebook, which he describes as the “true Enemy of the People.”
Some of the same publications—The Washington Post, for example—were a little less critical when President Joe Biden joined the app in February, despite his own administration banning it from federal government devices just one year before. Even some Democratic officials said they were concerned about the “mixed message.”
More interesting, though, is that while Biden’s TikTok account has been live for four months and has posted dozens of videos, Trump’s—live for just over a day, with one video uploaded—has already beaten the President’s follower count more than tenfold, amassing close to four million followers by 5 p.m. CEST on Monday, June 3rd.
Trump ally and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said online that “Donald Trump joining TikTok is going to be huge, you watch. Gen Z are crying out for leadership.”
