On Jan. 18, TikTok went dark ahead of a federal ban on the app that was set to take effect the following day, a move that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to as a “stunt” in her remarks. By Jan. 19, the app was again available for American users. Based on statements from ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the app, they expect Trump to be their savior and thanked him for his help.
According to The New York Times, President-elect Donald Trump pledged on his Truth Social platform that he would “issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”
Trump also said that his executive order would “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
Trump’s promise is in direct conflict with the federal law, which arrived via a bipartisan effort, and a ruling from the conservatively biased Supreme Court, the law states that app stores and cloud computing providers stand to face financial penalties if they don’t comply.
As Rep. Jasmine Crockett pointed out on social media, Trump’s proposed executive order could potentially be his first test of how far he can bend the rule of law until his will breaks it.
Rep. Crockett also noted in her responses to voters that she believes that in order for the executive order to be rescinded, someone will have to sue because the Department of Justice won’t step in.
In a statement which announced the return of the social media app, TikTok thanked Trump, while some social media users noted that this problem is largely one of Trump’s own making.
“We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” TikTok said.
Despite celebrations from TikTok creators, TikTok users, and the company themselves, legal experts are cautioning that the devil is in the details, in this case the details of Trump’s promised executive order.
According to Alan Rosenshtein, an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota, “There’s no good path here from a rule of law perspective.”
Peter Harrell, a former Biden Administration official, told the New York Times that Trump’s proposed executive order doesn’t seem like it’s going to hold up to legal scrutiny.
“What Trump has proposed on social media seems lawless. We’ll have to see what he actually does to implement it,” Harrell said.
Just ahead of Trump’s post promising an executive order on Truth Social, Speaker Mike Johnson told NBC News that he believed the President-elect actually wants to negotiate a deal for TikTok to become owned by an American company.
“When President Trump issued the Truth [Social] post and said, ‘Save Tiktok,’ the way we read that is that he’s going to try to force along a true divestiture, changing of hands, the ownership,” Speaker Johnson said.
According to the law, Trump cannot unilaterally give a 90-day extension unless ByteDance guarantees to him that they will sell the app to an American company.
“The law is very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works,” Speaker
Johnson noted. “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, and that 270 million American people who enjoy the platform can enjoy it, but enjoy it safely and not have their data being mined by our nation’s enemy.”RELATED CONTENT: As TikTok Goes Dark, Black Creators Are Flocking To New App