Donald Trump joins TikTok despite previously calling for it to be banned
Donald Trump has joined TikTok, the video-sharing app he once tried to ban when in office as US president.
He posted his first video from a Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event, showing the former president waving to fans and posing for selfies at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday night.
"It's an honour," Trump said the video, after being welcomed on the platform by UFC president Dana White. "That was a good walk on right?"
The account now has more than 3.7 million followers and the post has been seen more than 63 million times.
In contrast, President Joe Biden's re-election campaign TikTok account - which has been active since February - currently has more than 345,000 followers.
"We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content," Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“There’s no place better than a UFC event to launch President Trump’s TikTok, where he received a hero’s welcome and thousands of fans cheered him on."
The crowd at Newark's Prudential Center broke into chants of “We love Trump!” and another insulting Biden with an expletive.
Trump has used appearances at UFC fights throughout his campaign to project an image of strength and to try to appeal to Americans who may not closely engage with politics or traditional news sources.
During his administration, Trump amplified concerns about TikTok’s links to China as part of his broader anti-China agenda.
He put TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, at the centre of US tensions with China and pushed unsuccessfully to ban the app from the United States by executive order.
President Biden and a majority of lawmakers have echoed Trump’s concern, with Biden signing legislation that would force TikTok to sell to another company or face an outright ban.
But Trump now says he opposes a nationwide TikTok ban, adding that such a policy would only alienate young Americans and benefit Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
TikTok has previously said that any alleged national security risks linked to the app are purely hypothetical and there has been no publicly presented evidence suggesting the Chinese government has accessed the personal data of TikTok’s US users.
Sunday's UFC event was Trump's first public outing since a jury found him guilty on 34 charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Trump says he will appeal the 'scam' conviction and will be sentenced on July 11.
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