Photo: Alamy
Despite the current political persecution President Trump is fighting, his official launch on the Chinese entertainment app TikTok has been a success, with records broken.
CNBC News reported President Trump’s campaign’s official launch on the entertainment app, which is currently facing a potential ban in the country due to security concerns.
President Trump’s first TikTok video was under the account name @realdonaldtrump, and it featured a montage of him waving to the crowds at the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) show in Newark, New Jersey. Accompanying the video, President Trump wrote, “It’s my honor.”
President Trump’s move to this entertainment app comes after the verdict of the sham hush money trial. After his ban from social media sites like X (then Twitter), President Trump created his own successful free speech social media platform, Truth Social, which saw success, and now his TikTok debut has seen even more success.
CBS News reported that President Trump opposes a TikTok ban. While he agrees that security issues of data privacy and national security need to be addressed, he does feel “there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it” and that “young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”
Within just 10 hours of posting his first video, President Trump received a staggering 1.5 million likes and currently has more than 80 million views. President Trump’s campaign may not have arrived on the entertainment app before Joe Biden’s campaign, but President Trump’s is already more successful.
For example, Biden’s account only had 362,800 followers, while by Sunday, the day after his debut, President Trump’s account had 5.6 million followers. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also has a TikTok account but only has 1.3 million followers.
This means that President Trump holds the title of being the most popular candidate on TikTok, which isn’t surprising considering how much support he has.