Former President Donald Trump announced Saturday evening that he has joined TikTok, even as many in his party criticize the popular app and call for a divestment from its China-based parent company.
Trump’s first post on the platform was a 13-second video that appeared to be filmed at the UFC event he attended in New Jersey on Saturday. In the first shot, Trump is joined by UFC president Dana White, who announces, “The president is now on TikTok.”
“It’s my honor,” Trump responds as the TikTok cuts to a montage of the former president greeting fans in the arena.
“That was a good walk, right?” Trump says in the closing moments of the clip.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Saturday’s move is a far cry from Trump’s stance a few years ago, when he issued an executive order that would have banned TikTok in the US. The order was stopped by the court.
“The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” said the executive order Trump signed in 2020.
In March, Trump reversed course and opposed a ban on TikTok, saying that banning TikTok would improve revenue for rival social media apps he had previously been criticized for, such as Facebook.
At the same time, many Republicans are still strongly opposed to TikTok, and Trump said he considered the app a threat to national security even after speaking out against a ban.
President Joe Biden signed a bill in April that would ban TikTok, but not immediately. The legislation set in motion a nine-month clock for ByteDance to sell the app or face a TikTok ban in the US
At the same time, Biden’s campaign has a TikTok account and regularly posts content, and that is likely to remain the case as the potential ban would not take effect until after the election.
Trump’s move to join TikTok comes just weeks after the super PAC backing him, Make America Great Again Inc., jumped on the app.
Even before Trump joined TikTok, the app had seen nearly twice as many pro-Trump posts as pro-Biden posts since November, the New York Times reported last month, citing the app’s internal analysis.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
