Trump says he will ‘most likely’ give TikTok a 90-day extension to avoid a ban

Trump spoke to NBC News’ Kristen Welker in an exclusive phone interview Saturday, discussing his plans on what to do about the popular social media app.

President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in a phone interview Saturday that he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a potential ban in the U.S. after he takes office Monday.

Trump said he hadn’t made a final decision but was considering a 90-day extension of the Sunday deadline for TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell to a non-Chinese-buyer or face a U.S. ban.

“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in the phone interview.

“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he said.

A 90-day extension under specific conditions is explicitly allowed for in the bipartisan law passed last year. But an extension Monday may not be enough to avoid the app going dark for at least a day, because the current deadline for compliance is Sunday.

The fate of TikTok is one of the subjects that has consumed the final days of the Biden administration, and many of the app’s millions of U.S. users are eagerly awaiting a resolution.

No such binding legal agreements have been made public. If a last-minute buyer came forward, they would likely need to spend tens of billions of dollars for TikTok’s U.S. operations.

Trump did not say whether he was aware of any recent progress toward a sale.

Trump’s support for TikTok is a sharp reversal from his stance during his first term, when Trump signed executive orders to ban not only TikTok but also the Chinese messaging app WeChat. Trump’s attempt at the time was blocked by the courts. His reversal came after he met briefly with one of the app’s billionaire American investors last year.

Lawmakers who have supported a sale or ban say some action is necessary because of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government, which they say shouldn’t have control of a major media property that could be used for propaganda purposes. They also cite the app’s collection of personal data from American citizens.

TikTok’s fans have protested the possible sale or ban, including by downloading other Chinese apps such as RedNote despite potential security concerns about those apps, too.

On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the law, rejecting the app’s free speech arguments in an unsigned opinion with no dissents.

Ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump asked the court to hit pause on the law, asking for some time for his administration to work on finding alternative solutions to banning the app.

In the wake of the ruling Friday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

In the past, he has signaled his support for letting the app remain available to users in the U.S., citing the high number of views his TikTok accounts receive.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration ceremony Monday, along with other tech executives.

On Friday, TikTok’s future remained uncertain, as Chew thanked Trump for his efforts to keep the app running in the U.S.

Even before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Biden administration officials signaled that they would not enforce the law on Sunday, the last day of Biden’s term.

“Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday,” the White House’s Jean-Pierre said in a statement after the ruling.

“The statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans,” TikTok said in a post on X.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” the statement added.

 

TikTok, the short-form video app known for dance challenges, viral trends and an algorithm said to know users better than they knew themselves, died in the U.S. Sunday.

First launched in the United States in 2018, the app quickly became the most downloaded social and entertainment app in the world. By 2020, when Americans were looking for ways to escape boredom amid COVID-19 lockdowns, the app had gained over 100 million U.S. users.

“People were really clamoring for relatable, unscripted, and unvarnished elements of life,” said Brooke Duffy, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Department of Communication who researches digital and social media industries. “It was kind of positioned as the antidote to Instagram.”

TikTok ban timeline:How did we get here and what happens next?

Other platforms tried to emulate the app. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, launched its own version of TikTok, Reels, in 2020. So did Snap Inc., parent company to Snapchat. YouTube followed suit with a U.S. YouTube Shorts launch the next year.

Despite growing competition, TikTok became many people’s go-to for internet searches, news and shopping. With about 170 million Americans ‒ roughly half of the U.S. population ‒ using the app by 2025, the app’s virtual trends often had ripple effects in the real world.

BookTok gave the publishing industry a boost in sales and a new generation of readers. Meme songs jumped to the Billboard charts. Ingredients like Feta reportedly became harder to find in grocery stores after recipes went viral on the app. Fashion aesthetics like coastal grandmother and cottagecore pushed some to refresh their wardrobes.

Trends on TikTok often became a priority for businesses, according to Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama’s department of journalism and creative media who researches social media platforms and internet popular culture.

“That was true for publishing. That became true for music, that became true for food, for travel, for all different types of industries,” Maddox said. “If you could make your offline experience, be it food or a tourist destination, something that would look good to capture on TikTok, then it was going to be a success.”

TikTok, by all accounts, could be a ridiculous corner of the internet. It was the platform that spread the joke “Nyquil chicken” recipe, where people sang sea shanties and pretended to die after drinking an aggressively purple McDonald’s Grimace shake.

But the app sometimes brought out the best in humanity. A teacher’s viral video raised over $30,000 to pay student lunch debt. Another video helped raise over $230,000 to help an Uber driver pay family medical bills and other expenses. Californians have used the app to collect donations for victims affected by wildfires.

The app could also bring out the worst in people. TikTok, at times, circulated harmful misinformation and trends. Some experts said the app could be addictive. Lawmakers worried it put national security at risk, which ultimately led to its demise with the Supreme Court on Friday upholding a law to effectively ban the app in the U.S.

“It’s not a perfect social media app. There’s no such thing because people are not perfect,” Maddox said. At the same time, “it’s really easy to scoff at TikTok as a silly little app that wastes people’s time and kills attention span. But it also educates and has built community, and we’ve seen that community expand into political action.”

There’s a chance TikTok’s wake is brief. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “save” the platform and told NBC News he expects to “most likely” offer a 90-day extension to avoid the ban. TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew said he would work with Trump to keep the platform available in the U.S.

“Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery, as well as a source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” Chew said Friday in a post to the official TikTok and X accounts.

How quickly Trump will be able to carry out his mass deportation plan depends on these factors

The incoming administration will need to clear a number of hurdles to enact its plan, immigration experts said.

Donald Trump has vowed to begin enacting the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history on Day 1 of his presidency, with one aide saying enforcement will begin “the moment that President Trump puts his hand on that Bible and takes the oath of office” on Monday.

But just how large that operation is and how swiftly it can be carried out will be determined, in part, by whether the administration can clear a number of hurdles, immigration experts said. Those include pushback from some cities and local law enforcement agencies, a budget and staffing shortfall for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, lawsuits from advocacy and civil rights groups, and questions about the cooperation of countries needed to increase removal numbers.

There are currently an estimated 11 million people in the United States who lack legal status.

“I do not think that it will be possible to deport the entire unauthorized immigrant population,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, told NBC News.

Trump’s first administration removed unauthorized immigrants nearly 1.2 million times, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. The Obama administration removed unauthorized immigrants 2.9 million times in his first term and 1.9 million in his second. The figures can include people who were deported more than once.

“The first Trump administration didn’t reach those levels partly because of decreased cooperation with local and state law enforcement, due to in many cases sanctuary policies and laws,” Bush-Joseph said. “This time around, we have many sheriffs and local law enforcement departments on record saying either that they are willing to support the mass deportation plans or that they will not.”

She said she will be watching for a potential “growing divide between red and blue states and localities.”

Democratic city and state leaders across the country have already promised to oppose Trump’s plans, and in some cases have passed ordinances intended to shield undocumented immigrants from his efforts to deport them. Meanwhile, Texas has flexed its own law enforcement power at the border and positioned itself to be a key player in Trump’s immigration agenda as other conservative states have passed anti-sanctuary policies.

During the last decade, about 70% to 75% of arrests by ICE in the interior of the United States were handed over from other law enforcement agencies, including local and state jails as well as federal prison, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, said that “for Trump’s policy to work, it may be that a lot of it is going to be coordination with the states.”

Trump officials have said they will take on localities that resist his plans and that the incoming president is considering withholding federal police grants from law enforcement agencies that decline to aid in deportations.

Trump pursued a similar strategy during his first term but was met with significant legal hurdles. The question of what his administration can legally force states and localities to do remains an open question, Su said.

If the courts rule in favor of Trump’s ability to mobilize federal resources and push states and localities to comply, “residents may start turning against these things pretty dramatically,” he said.

As Trump’s second administration unfolds, there could be efforts by some places to fully maintain their sanctuary status, while others could cooperate in cases deemed to be higher priority, such as those who have criminal backgrounds or are deemed national security threats, said Andrea Flores, the vice president of immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us, which describes itself as a bipartisan organization that advocates for immigration reform.

“But cities will continue to be a front-line defense because they’ve had to provide a patchwork of protections for their population,” said Flores, an immigration policy adviser to the Biden and Obama administrations.

Trump told NBC News last month that his administration would first focus on deporting criminals and then expand its operations.

The Trump administration’s ability to enact that plan at the pace and scale he seeks could also be hindered by legal action from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups. While the specific legal strategies will depend on what actions Trump takes and if there are potential civil rights issues, the American Civil Liberties Union has said it is “ready to take action the minute Trump takes the oath of office.”

ICE budget shortfall

Another potential major obstacle is the $230 million ICE budget shortfall, even before the costs associated with mass deportations, two U.S. officials familiar with the figure exclusively told NBC News in December.

“ICE is already operating at a shortfall. Unless and until Congress provides a large amount of additional funding for the enforcement aspects of the mass deportation plans, it could really take time to ramp up,” Bush-Joseph said.

Negotiations on spending will begin in January, when Republicans have control of the White House and the Senate and narrow control of the House, but it remains unclear when and how Congress will agree to funding.

“The fact is that even when Trump came in with his tough talk, he didn’t dramatically increase deportations,” Su said of Trump’s first term. “Part of that was resources, part of that was funding.”

Trump’s mass deportation policy could cost more than an estimated $88 billion, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigration research and immigrant advocacy group. Trump previously told NBC News that there was “no price tag” when it came to his mass deportation plan.