Despite trying to ban it, Trump just joined TikTok

Trump is on TikTok
Credit: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump is now on TikTok, a move he announced it in an unsurprisingly weird way.

In a video posted onto TikTok on Saturday from the verified account @realDonaldTrump, UFC CEO Dana White introduced Trump, saying “The president is now on TikTok.”

“It’s my honor,” Trump said, which is pretty odd considering the politician and convicted felon tried to ban the app while he was in office. The rest of the video pans across different shots of the crowd at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey to the tune of “American Bad Ass” by Kid Rock.

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“The campaign is playing on all fields,” an adviser to Trump’s campaign told Politico. “Being able to do outreach on multiple platforms and outlets is important and this is just one of many ways we’re going to reach out to voters. TikTok skews towards a younger audience.”

Both presidential candidates — Trump and President Joe Biden — have attempted to ban the app. In April, Biden signed a bill into law that could effectively ban TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, sells its shares in the app. When Trump was in office, he issued an executive order to stop new users from downloading TikTok, but courts blocked his attempts.

Despite this, both Biden and Trump’s campaigns are on the app themselves.

Christianna Silva is a Senior Culture Reporter at Mashable. They write about tech and digital culture, with a focus on Facebook and Instagram. Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow them on Twitter @christianna_j.

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