This week, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) as his National Security Advisor. In doing so, Trump picked one of the biggest congressional crusaders against TikTok, who even bashed the use of the app to campaign for office, a strategy Trump adopted along the way to the White House.
In a March 2023 post, Waltz responded to a Wall Street Journal article discussing how a TikTok ban would harm Democrats in 2024.
“It would be craven for Biden & Democrats not to ban TikTok because it helps their campaigns,” he wrote.
Trump, in 2024, firmly reversed course on banning TikTok, even campaigning under the auspices of saving it.
“I’m gonna save TikTok,” Trump said in a video with over 87.5 million views.
Waltz also criticized the Biden administration’s use of influencer outreach, calling the effort to court voices on the app a “Massive win for Beijing.”
Biden, Waltz said, “is basically planting the CCP flag inside 1600 Penn.”
Trump leaned into his own pairing with influencers that helped extend his reach in 2024.
Immediately upon joining, Trump filmed a video with Logan Paul that racked up over 168 million views. Other prominent influencers helped promulgate his popularity across the app.
A clip of him dancing in front of a Cybertruck with Twitch streamer Adin Ross was dubbed “the biggest stream in history” and drew 68 million views.
Another video, with Puerto Rican musician Anuel AA, garnered 28.9 million views.
Waltz also accused the company of tweaking its algorithms to affect political discourse in the U.S., claiming China might be boosting videos discouraging Gen Z from joining the military and shifting views about the war in Gaza.
But it’s hard to stress how omnipresent Trump was on TikTok in the final days. Supporters routinely went viral for professing their plans to vote for him, T-shirts with his likeness blew up, and clips of Trump on podcasts like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and the Nelk Boys racked up numerous views.
Waltz’s criticism of Biden’s influencer outreach was only part of his crusade against TikTok.
In a post in 2023, Waltz bashed people who held security clearances for using TikTok.
“Extremely concerning to see the former Chairman of the Intel Committee use TikTok, aka Chinese spyware, to fundraise. This is exactly why Speaker McCarthy was right to remove him.” Waltz wrote about Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
Waltz also called TikTok “an arm of the communists,” and flat-out said, “We need to ban TikTok.”
“America needs to ban TikTok,” he later reiterated.
Trump, toward the end of his administration, pushed to ban the app, and legislation in Congress attempted to do the same. Biden signed a bill requiring a sale, but its enforceability is in question.
The app, which is owned by a China-based company, routinely faced accusations it is an arm of the Chinese government and abuses user data to push Communist party aims.
Those are accusations the company vehemently denies, though reporting has poked holes in its denials.
Trump, having flipped his stance while running, seems unlikely now to implement legislation forcing a sale of the app.
Whether his National Security Advisor, who will be at the forefront of his China policy, will adopt the same stance is unknown.
But he has not posted about TikTok since Trump joined the app in June.
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