Trump Prepares To Ban TikTok In The U.S. – Is It Revenge For President’s Tulsa Rally Debacle?

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he could take action to ban the Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States due to the national security concerns.

“We are looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There a couple of options, but a lot of things are happening. So we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said Monday the administration is closely monitoring the situation amid the national security concerns.

“We are taking this very seriously, and we are certainly looking at it. We have worked on this very issue for a long time, whether its the problem of having Huawei technology in your infrastructure – we’ve gone all over the world and we are making real progress getting that out – we had declared ZTE a danger to American national security,” said Pompeo.

“With respect to Chinese apps on people’s cell phones, I can assure you the United States will get this one right too,” he said.

On Sunday, Microsoft announced it is in acquisition talks with TikTok over its ownerships and operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

However, some in the media have speculated that Trump’s real reason for taking action could be rooted from his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, back in June. The event, which was supposed to be his celebratory comeback after months of the COVID-19 lockdown, was a disaster for him as young TikTokers coordinated an internet movement to register for campaign tickets with no intention to show up.

Article by Dongyoon Shin