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Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference the day after a guilty verdict in his criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to hide money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 at Trump Tower in New York City, USA, May 31, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign launched an official account on TikTok on Saturday evening as the social media platform faces a possible ban in the United States
“It’s an honor,” Trump said in his first TikTok post under the handle “@realdonaldtrump,” followed by a montage of him waving to the crowd at an Ultimate Fighting Championship show on Saturday. This post received 1.5 million likes within 10 hours of going live.
Trump’s TikTok launch came as his own social media company, Trump Media, suffered a financial collapse following the historic verdict that convicted the former president of 34 felonies in his hush money trial in Manhattan.
Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social Trading under the DJT Ticker, was down over 5% at $49 at market close on Friday, the day after Trump’s conviction. Immediately after Trump’s sentencing on Thursday, the stock fell about 15% during extended trading hours.
Trump launched Truth Social in early 2022 as an alternative, “unwoke” social media platform after being banned from sites like Twitter and others Facebook after the Capitol riots on January 6th. Trump Media has since gone public and the former president now owns a 65% stake in the company.
Truth Social did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Trump’s move to TikTok.
Trump is several months later than his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, whose re-election campaign launched on TikTok in February. But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee already had over 2 million followers as of Sunday, surpassing the Biden campaign’s nearly 340,000.
The disparity in these follower counts is typical of social media accounts directly linked to a specific candidate, generally outperforming accounts linked to a campaign. For example, Trump’s direct Truth Social account “@realDonaldTrump” had over 7 million followers as of Sunday, while his campaign account “@TeamTrump” had 427,000.
“We refuse to cede any ground to Biden and the Democrats,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to NBC News on Sunday. “We will convey President Trump’s message of success to every possible voter. He has already gained significant traction with young voters and this is another way to reach them.”
Both candidates joined TikTok despite previously raising national security concerns about the app.
In April, Biden signed a foreign aid package that included a clause to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a nationwide ban in the United States
During his time in office, Trump also said he would seek to ban TikTok, although he has since changed that stance. Still, he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in an interview in March that he believed TikTok could threaten U.S. national security.
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2024-06-02 21:00:05
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