The President of the United States, Donald Trump, expressed his willingness for the tech mogul Elon Musk to acquire the social network TikTok if he wishes, despite Musk not publicly expressing interest in doing so. The possibility arose at a press conference when a reporter asked Trump about the possibility of TikTok falling into Musk's hands, who is already the owner of the social network X.
"He would, if he wanted to buy it," the president replied. According to a Bloomberg report, the Chinese government is evaluating the acquisition of TikTok's operations in the United States by Musk to prevent the application from being banned in that country. Although Trump admitted to not having the application on his phone, he joked, saying, "maybe I'll download it right now."
Trump expressed a special affection for TikTok, stating that this social network helped him gain votes among young people in the elections, despite survey data showing a different result. While TikTok was inactive for several hours in the United States last weekend, Trump announced a 90-day extension for it to continue operating in the country after a law requiring the platform to separate from its parent company, the Chinese ByteDance.
The president has emphasized his preference for U.S. companies to acquire at least 50% of TikTok to address concerns about national security. The U.S. Congress, with bipartisan support, has backed this measure, citing the risk of the Chinese government accessing U.S. user data. TikTok has implemented measures to protect user privacy and has denied that it could be used by Beijing as a propaganda tool.
