Trump Supreme Court TikTok Ban

Photo Credit: Fine Photographics

President-elect Trump has asked the Supreme Court to allow him to negotiate a deal to save TikTok—preventing the ban from going into place on January 19.

Trump’s legal team filed an amicus brief with the court stating that the President-elect “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.” The brief allows states that Trump “alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform.”

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments that the bill banning TikTok on national security concerns is a violation of First Amendment rights. The bill gives the president the ability to delay its enforcement if progress is made in separating TikTok from its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance. The current deadline is January 19—just a day before Trump will be sworn in.

Trump seeks a stay on that deadline, arguing that he would negotiate a deal that would “obviate the need for [the Supreme Court] to decide the historically challenging First Amendment question presented here on the current, highly expedited basis.”

CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins said that President-elect Trump spoke to TikTok CEO Shou Chew on Friday after the filing. Trump also met with Shou Chew around two weeks ago at Mar-a-Lago, with the two men discussing the platform, telling the crowd at the club “maybe we gotta keep this sucker around for a little while.”

The about face is an interesting one, since Trump was the first president to push for a national ban on the social media platform. Trump changed his tune on TikTok after joining the platform this year and telling its users to vote Trump if they want to save the platform. Meanwhile, a group of Senators and Congressmen including Mitch McConnell and Ro Khanna filed petitions urging the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s appeal.