Donald Trump says young people ‘owe’ him for saving TikTok

President Donald Trump returned to TikTok on Oct. 6 for the first time in nearly a year after his administration worked on a deal that would keep the popular video app operating in the United States.

“To all of those young people of TikTok, I saved TikTok, so you owe me big,” Trump said while seated in the Oval Office in the Oct. 6 post.

Vice President JD Vance also posted to the platform on Oct. 6 in an apparent relaunch of his account on the platform. “I got a little lazy the last few months was focused on the job of being VP and not on TikTok,” Vance said.

White House officials said in September that TikTok had reached a preliminary deal to keep operating in the United States. The new U.S. venture will be valued at $14 billion, Vance said.

But various procedural hurdles remain even with Trump’s signature, including a review of antitrust laws governing fair market competition. The full composition of the ownership group is expected to be finalized by the closing of the deal, which could come in early 2026. 

Trump has already hinted at some names, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, billionaire tech investor Michael Dell, businessman and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and his son Lachlan Murdoch. Reuters reported that TikTok’s current owners, Chinese tech company ByteDance, would have a “bigger-than-expected role” in the new venture.

Oracle, a U.S.-based technology firm helmed by Ellison, would be in charge of inspecting and monitoring TikTok’s algorithm to make sure it’s not used for any “malicious purpose,” a U.S. official said.

Trump’s stance on TikTok

The last time Trump posted to the platform was on Election Day 2024, where he encouraged Republicans to remain in voting lines.

During his first term as president, he tried to ban the app. In an executive order issued in August 2020, Trump claimed the app was capturing massive amounts of information about Americans and leaving it vulnerable to the Chinese government.

“These risks are real,” the order said. “This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information − potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

The order was later blocked by a federal judge and dropped by the Biden administration.

Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr., Zac Anderson, Joey Garrison, and Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY; Reuters