GOP Lawmakers Break With Trump on TikTok as He Steps in to Save App

Corbin Bolies
·2-min read
Mike Johnson and Tom Cotton
Bryan Dozier/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty; Jemal Countess/AFP via Getty

Despite President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to issue an executive order extending ByteDance’s chance to sell TikTok before a national ban, multiple Republican lawmakers seemed to relish in the app’s shutdown.

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE) hailed tech companies including Amazon, Apple, and Google for removing TikTok from their app stores and cloud systems on Saturday as the ban was set to take effect.

They also dismissed a provision in the law that would allow for a 90-day extension if there was progress toward a sale. Cotton is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while Ricketts sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

”The law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it," they wrote in a joint statement. “Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date. For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok.“

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TikTok went dark on Saturday night, hours before a law banning its continued operations while under a Chinese-based company’s control took effect.

In a notice to users, TikTok said it was “fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us” to bring the app back online. Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday he would issue an executive order on Monday delaying a potential ban.

The comments came as House Speaker Mike Johnson promised on Sunday the country would enforce the law and said Trump would negotiate a “true divestiture” of the platform from China, where ByteDance is based. Johnson has been a longtime advocate for the ban—as had Trump and President Joe Biden, before their reversals.

“It’s not the platform that members of Congress are concerned about,” Johnson said on Meet the Press. “It’s the Chinese Communist Party and their manipulation of the algorithms. They have been flooding the minds of American children with terrible messages glorifying violence and antisemitism and even suicide and eating disorders, I mean, crazy kind of stuff, and they’re mining the data of American citizens. It’s a very dangerous thing.”

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