TikTok Hangs in the Balance—Trump’s Incoming Cabinet Divided on a Ban

Will TikTok face its upcoming ban in the United States? Trump’s incoming cabinet members seem divided on the issue—with some in favor of keeping the ban in place.

While President-elect Trump was the first to call for a ban on TikTok, a law making it official wasn’t enacted until President Biden took office. Trump himself has also seemingly reversed course on the ban after joining the platform and telling its users, “If you want to save TikTok, vote Trump.”

TikTok executives themselves believe a Trump presidency is their best bet at avoiding the current ban slated for January 2025. But the main playbook used by the incoming administration, Project 2025, calls for the ban on TikTok to stay in place. TikTok is referred to as a “tool of Chinese espionage” and the playbook suggests outlawing the app.

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chair pick is Brendan Carr, who has stated one of his main priorities during Trump’s second administration will be reigning in Big Tech. That includes banning TikTok. Meanwhile, Trump’s pick for the head of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, also wrote about his feelings on the social media platform. “TikTok is a national security threat,” Ratcliffe told Fox Business in 2022, agreeing that the platform should be banned in the United States.

Even Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has spoken out against the platform. “As a GenZ American, I can tell you all my friends, my colleagues, my former classmates are on TikTok. It is the main source of news for the majority of American youth, and it is truly the bane of our society right now,” Leavitt said in an interview on Fox Business.

“It is owned by the CCP. They are pushing algorithms that are very damaging to the intellectual curiosity and to the ideology of young Americans today.”

Trump’s pick for National Security Adviser, Michael Waltz, has also spoken on record favorably about a TikTok ban. “It is long overdue,” Waltz said about banning TikTok. “We should not allow our greatest adversary to access 150 million Americans and their data. Why is it okay to ban TikTok on all government devices because it’s essentially a spyware tool—but it’s okay to ban it on our kids’ phones, monitoring everything they look at? We would have never allowed this in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and we shouldn’t be allowing it now.”

Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been firmly against TikTok since it purchased Musical.ly in 2019 and the two apps merged. He co-introduced legislation to ban TikTok from government devices in 2021 and supported Trump’s executive order to ban TikTok if ByteDance does not divest from the platform. Rubio says he would defer to Trump on TikTok. “He’s the president, so if that’s what he wants to do, he also has the power to do it.”

Trump’s pick for Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, was instrumental in banning TikTok in her home state of South Dakota while serving as Governor of the state. Speaking with Fox News in March, Noem called TikTok “owned by the Chinese Communist Party.”

While several Trump picks are seemingly all for a ban on TikTok, not everyone is on the same page. Tulsi Gabbard is Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence and has publicly criticized the legislation that would force a sale of TikTok or a full ban. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the pick for Health and Human Services Secretary and he has also spoken out against an outright ban.

“Don’t be fooled — the TikTok ban is not about China harvesting your data. That’s a smoke screen,” Kennedy said on the former Twitter in April. “Congress and the administration don’t understand that TikTok is an entrepreneurial platform for thousands of American young people. They want to screw them over just so they can pretend to be tough on China.”

Even Elon Musk himself has opposed a ban on TikTok, despite now owning competitor X/Twitter. “In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform,” he wrote in April. “Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.” The Wall Street Journal recently reported that TikTok CEO Shou Chew reached out to Elon Musk to solicit advice in the face of the potential January ban.