Prompts winter weather advisories as cold air moves in Friday night

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

President Donald Trump is calling national security and privacy concerns related to TikTok and its Chinese parent company “highly overrated” and said Friday he'll keep extending the deadline for the popular video-sharing platform until there's a buyer.

Congress approved a U.S. ban on TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold its controlling stake. But Trump has so far extended the deadline 

 during his second term — with the next one coming up on Sept. 17.

“We’re gonna watch the security concerns,” Trump told reporters, but added, “We have buyers, American buyers,” and “until the complexity of things work out, we just extend a little bit longer.”

The first extension was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when a national ban — 

 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — took effect. The 

, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement.

His comments follow the White House starting a TikTok account this week.

“I used TikTok in the campaign,” Trump said.

“I’m a fan of TikTok,” he said. “My kids like TikTok. Young people love TikTok. If we could keep it going.”

As the extensions continue, it appears less and less likely that TikTok will be banned in the U.S. any time soon. The decision to keep TikTok alive through an executive order has received some scrutiny, but the administration has 

 — unlike many of Trump’s other executive orders.

Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.

 found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50 percent in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.

Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.

Business and Economic News

Homepage

The Associated Press

Author

President Donald Trump is calling national security and privacy concerns related to TikTok and its Chinese parent company “highly overrated” and said Friday he'll keep extending the deadline for the popular video-sharing platform until there's a buyer.


Trump says he’ll keep extending TikTok shutdown deadline

Go Deeper.

Like this?