Former President Trump joined TikTok on Saturday, exceeding the Biden campaign’s followers in less than 24 hours after opening the account.
Trump and his staff produced their first TikTok video on Saturday night, starring the former president and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White at a UFC title bout in New Jersey.
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The video began with White telling the camera, “The President is now on TikTok,” and Trump responding, “It’s my honor.” The 13-second video then shows Trump entering Saturday night’s bout at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, and greeting fans and other attendees.
The video received over 2.3 million likes and 38 million views in less than 15 hours, as of Sunday at 2 p.m. With over 2.2 million followers, Trump’s account now surpasses the Biden-Harris HQ account, which debuted in February, by more than six times.
While president, Trump attempted to prohibit TikTok by issuing an executive order requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, to sell its holdings in the United States. A court later overruled the order.
In a dramatic turnaround, Trump opposed the most recent moves to ban TikTok this year, arguing it would benefit Facebook, which banned him in January 2021 following the Capitol rioting. He blamed President Biden as legislation to potentially ban the app advanced through Congress and to the president’s desk, amidst mounting national security worries over the program’s ties to China.
Biden promptly signed the bill in late April, setting a deadline for ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban from US app stores and networks.
MAGA Inc., Trump’s superPAC, joined TikTok last month using the name @MAGA. Since its launch on Sunday, it has had over 17,000 followers and more than 176,000 likes.
“MAGA INC. will not cede any platform to Joe Biden and the Democrats who are trying to destroy our country,” Taylor Budowich, CEO of MAGA Inc., stated last month about the superPAC’s TikTok launch. We will make sure that President Trump’s America First agenda reaches every corner of the internet and every precinct of this country.”
The decision to join the platform may indicate an attempt to interact with younger voters ahead of November, as Trump and Biden stay neck and neck in national polling.
“We will not leave any front undefended, and this represents continued outreach to a younger audience that consumes pro-Trump and anti-Biden content.” “There’s no better place to launch President Trump’s Tik Tok than at a UFC event, where he was greeted as a hero and thousands of fans cheered him on,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told The Hill.
“The video he posted went immediately viral, garnering 40 million views in just a few hours, as he has gained 2.5 million followers since the launch,” Cheung stated.
Despite growing legal issues, Trump has a razor-thin 1.5-point nationwide lead against Biden, according to a polling index compiled by The Hill and Decision Desk.
Only days have passed since New York found Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying company records, making him the first former US president to face a felony conviction.
The allegations stemmed from payments made to Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer and attorney, for a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
On July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he will receive his sentence. Trump’s legal team has pledged to challenge the judgment, but the proceedings will continue as planned in the meantime.
