In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Trump confirmed that his administration is considering a ban on the social media app TikTok:
AXIOS – President Trump, speaking to Gray Television’s Greta Van Susteren, confirmed SecState Mike Pompeo’s comment that the administration is looking at a U.S. ban on the popular app TikTok — owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.
“It’s something we’re looking at. Yes,” Trump said.
Van Susteren: “Why would you ban it?”
Trump: “Well, it’s a big business. Look what happened with China with this virus — what they’ve done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful. And we are looking at numerous different things. TikTok’s one of them — one of many.”
Trump obviously doesn’t want to get too specific. But I think the concern is all the user data, including location data, that China has access to on Americans via this app.
As we told you before the company says it isn’t sharing data with the Chinese government, but I don’t think anyone believes them. And Trump citing how China acted regarding the coronavirus in terms of pushing it onto the world is all part of that mistrust.