President-elect Donald Trump's call to "save TikTok" means he'll force a true divestiture of it from ByteDance, its current ownership, not to disregard the law Congress passed to ban the social media site, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday.
"I think we will enforce the law," Johnson, R-La., told NBC News' "Meet the Press," adding that members of Congress are not concerned about the video platform itself.
"It's the Chinese Communist Party and their manipulation of the algorithms," Johnson said. "They have been flooding the minds of American children with terrible messages, glorifying violence and antisemitism and even suicide and eating disorders and they're mining the data of American citizens," he added. "It's a very dangerous thing. The Chinese Communist Party is not our friend, and we have to make sure this changes hands."
Trump on Sunday said he is planning to issue an executive order giving ByteDance more time to find an approved buyer before the platform, which temporarily went dark Sunday in the United States, is subjected to a permanent ban.
"There needs to be a sale of full divestiture from the Chinese Communist Party and I think President Trump is the one that can make that deal happen," said Johnson.
Meanwhile, ByteDance had 270 days to divest from TikTok but refused, he said.
"The law's very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works," said Johnson, noting multimillionaire businessman Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” has said he and an investor group are interested in buying the site.
"I think President Trump is probably intrigued by all this, and he likes to make deals, as you know, so we're very hopeful that that can happen," said Johnson.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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