By Jill Colvin, Will Weissert and Meg Kinnard – The Associated Press
Former President Donald Trump has joined the popular video-sharing social network TikTok, a platform he once tried to ban when he was in the White House.
In his debut, he posted a video of an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) poster, two days after he became the first former president (and virtual candidate of a major party) in United States history to be found guilty of a crime.
“It’s an honor,” Trump said in the TikTok video, in which he appears greeting fans and posing with them at the UFC card in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night. The video ends with Trump saying to the camera: “That’s a good start, right?”
Associated Press
On Sunday morning, Trump already had more than 1.1 million followers on the network and the message had achieved more than a million “likes” and more than 24 million views.
“We will not leave any front undefended, “This represents the continued outreach to a younger audience that consumes pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement about the decision to join the platform.
[“Pagarán”: partidarios de Trump publican amenazas violentas contra los jurados tras el fallo]
“There is no better place than a UFC event to launch Trump’s TikTok account, where he received a hero’s welcome and thousands of fans cheered him on,” he added.
President Joe Biden signed a law passed by Congress with a bipartisan majority in April that could ban TikTok in the United States, but his campaign joined the network in February and has tried to work with influencers facing the November elections, in which he aspires to re-election.
Trump received a rousing welcome at the fight at Newark’s Prudential Center, where the crowd broke into chants of “We love Trump!” and insults to Biden.
It was Trump’s first public appearance since a jury in New York found him guilty Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by covering up money payments in exchange for the silence of a porn actress who claimed she and Trump had sexual relations.
Trump has maintained that he did nothing illegal and plans to appeal the verdict. He will be sentenced on July 11.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has used appearances at UFC fights to project an image of strength, and try to appeal to potential voters who may not follow politics closely or engage with traditional news sources.
It is also part of a broader effort to connect with young people and minority voters, particularly Latino and black men.
TikTok, owned by Beijing, China-based ByteDance, is another opportunity to reach those potential voters. The network has about 170 million users in the United States, most of whom are young people, a demographic that is especially difficult for campaigns to reach because they do not watch television.
As president, Trump attempted to ban TikTok with an executive order that said “the spread in the United States of mobile apps developed and owned” by Chinese companies was a threat to national security. Courts blocked the measure after TikTok sued.
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share user data with the Chinese regimeyes such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers. TikTok has stated that it has never done this and would not do it if asked.
The network was a hot topic of debate during the 2024 Republican Party primary campaign. Most candidates rejected its use. Many, including former Vice President Mike Pence, called for TikTok to be banned in the United States due to its connections to China.
Trump stated earlier this year that he still believed TikTok posed a national security risk, but that he opposed banning it because it would help his rival, Facebook, a platform he continues to criticize for his loss in the 2020 election. in front of Biden.
“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok who love it. There are a lot of young people on TikTok who would go crazy without it,” she stated.
The legislation signed by Biden gives ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with the possibility of an additional three months if the sale is underway. If you don’t, TikTok will be banned. Biden banned the app on most government devices in December 2022.
However, his re-election campaign uses the app, which he joined during Super Bowl night in February. His aides argued that in an increasingly fragmented modern media environment, the campaign must get its message to voters across as many networks as possible, including TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
His account currently has more than 330,000 followers and 4.5 million likes.
Trump’s appearance at Saturday’s fight came after he agreed to an interview with Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend, which aired Sunday.
Trump assured that he was “ok” with the possibility of going to jail or serving under house arrest, and said that it was “what could happen.”
But he again suggested that the public might not accept that punishment for a former president now running to return to the White House. “I don’t know if the public would tolerate it. “I’m not sure the public would take it,” he stated, “I think it would be hard for the public to take.” You know, there is a breaking point.”
Trump, as he has done throughout the trial, maintained his innocence, saying he “did absolutely nothing wrong.”
Asked how his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, had received the news, he said: “She’s fine. But I think it’s very hard for her. I mean, she’s fine. But, you know, she has to read all this garbage,” she said. Melania Trump did not go to court at any time during the seven weeks of the trial.
