OAN Staff Abril Elfi
10:00 AM – Sunday, February 9, 2025
Elon Musk has stated that he is not planning to buy the TikTok app or has any plans with what he would do with it if he were to own it.
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On Saturday, the WELT group released a video from the WELT Economic Summit, which was held January 28th, in which Musk made the remarks regarding the application.
“I haven’t made a bid for TikTok, nor do I have any plans regarding what I would do if I owned it,” Musk said.
Musk previously stated that he usually does not buy companies, with Twitter, now X, being the exception to “protect freedom of speech.”
The Biden administration previously ordered Tiktok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform, which has around 170 million U.S.-based users, due to “national security” reasons.
The law was first signed by President Joe Biden on April 24th, 2024. It was known as the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” making it unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update a foreign adversary-controlled application.
The Biden administration’s concerns reportedly stem from the massive amount of data that the Chinese app gathers from its users, which could be utilized by the Chinese government to later “blackmail” U.S. citizens, nefariously using it to their advantage.
After taking office, Trump posted to Truth Social that his order would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect” and “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump wrote.
If a successful sale is in progress, the legislation allows the current president to issue a 90-day extension. Despite a few bids from investors, ByteDance previously stated that it does not plan on selling the app.
It’s currently unclear whether Trump was directing his statement to the U.S. government or an American business when he stated that he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.”
“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up,” Trump wrote. “Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions.”
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