Trump demands the right to decide TikTok's fate

Washington [US], December 28: US President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to suspend the enforcement of the law against TikTok, giving him the power to decide the fate of this social network.
In April, the US Congress passed a law requiring Chinese company ByteDance to divest from TikTok by January 19, 2025, or the video-sharing platform would be banned in the US. The law was later signed into law by President Joe Biden.
TikTok and ByteDance have been trying to get the law overturned, and the US Supreme Court recently took up the case. The court will hear arguments on January 10, 2025, just days before the statutory deadline.
Trump 's lawyer D. John Sauer , who has been nominated as US Attorney General, said on December 27 that the president-elect did not take a position on the merits of the case but asked the court to consider extending the deadline beyond January 19, 2025 to "allow the incoming Trump administration the opportunity to seek a political solution to the questions in the case," according to Reuters.
"President Trump possesses impeccable negotiating expertise, a voter mandate, and the political will to negotiate a solution that saves this platform while addressing national security concerns," said attorney Sauer.
In a petition to the court on December 27, Mr. Trump said he did not support either side, but as the 47th president, he had interests and responsibilities for national security and foreign policy issues, and was the right representative of the constitution to resolve disputes through political means.
"Through his historic victory on November 5, 2024, President Trump received a strong mandate from American voters to protect the free speech rights of all Americans, including the 170 million TikTok users ," Fox News quoted Mr. Trump's petition as saying.
Trump sought to ban TikTok in 2020 and force its sale to American companies because of allegations that the platform was owned by China. However, during this year's election campaign, he opened an account on TikTok and reversed his stance on the social network.According to Reuters, Mr. Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in December, hours after the president-elect said he had a favorable opinion of TikTok and supported allowing the platform to continue operating in the US for a while longer.
The US Justice Department has argued that China controls TikTok, making it a threat to US national security. TikTok has denied the allegations, saying that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the US, while content moderation decisions that affect US users are also made in the US.
Free speech activists oppose the ban while most US lawmakers support it. On December 27, 22 US state attorneys general sent a petition to the Supreme Court calling for the ban to remain in place.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper