The Trump TikTok flip-flop continues as the 47th president has shoved his finger into the eye of Congress. With scant legal authority, he has paused the divestment of the app by ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent. After issuing an executive order on point, the president then held out the possibility that Larry Ellison of Oracle, a Trump-backer, or Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, would scoop-up TikTok.
This is what crony capitalism looks like. Trump’s delay contravenes the law Congress passed last spring, which set a 19 January 2025 divestment deadline. Last week, the US supreme court unanimously held that Congress acted within its constitutional rights to sever the link between TikTok and China.
